They were going up the hill in the snow.
"Back to the palace of Pablo," Robert Jordan said to Anselmo.
It sounded wonderful in Spanish.
"_El Palacio del Miedo_," Anselmo said.
"The Palace of Fear."
"_La cueva de los huevos perdidos_," Robert Jordan capped the other happily. "The cave of the lost eggs."
"What eggs?" Fernando asked.
"A joke," Robert Jordan said. "Just a joke.
Not eggs, you know. The others."
"But why are they lost?" Fernando asked.
"I don't know," said Robert Jordan.
"Take a book to tell you.
Ask Pilar," then he put his arm around Anselmo's shoulder and held him tight as they walked and shook him.
"Listen," he said.
"I'm glad to see you, hear?
You don't know what it means to find somebody in this country in the same place they were left."
It showed what confidence and intimacy he had that he could say anything against the country.
"I am glad to see thee," Anselmo said.
"But I was just about to leave."
"Like hell you would have," Robert Jordan said happily.
"You'd have frozen first."
"How was it up above?" Anselmo asked.
"Fine," said Robert Jordan.
"Everything is fine."
He was very happy with that sudden, rare happiness that can come to any one with a command in a revolutionary arm; the happiness of finding that even one of your flanks holds.
If both flanks ever held I suppose it would be too much to take, he thought.
I don't know who is prepared to stand that.
And if you extend along a flank, any flank, it eventually becomes one man.
Yes, one man.
This was not the axiom he wanted.
But this was a good man.
One good man.
You are going to be the left flank when we have the battle, he thought.
I better not tell you that yet.
It's going to be an awfully small battle, he thought.
But it's going to be an awfully good one.
Well, I always wanted to fight one on my own.
I always had an opinion on what was wrong with everybody else's, from Agincourt down.
I will have to make this a good one.
It is going to be small but very select.
If I have to do what I think I will have to do it will be very select indeed.
"Listen," he said to Anselmo.
"I'm awfully glad to see you."
"And me to see thee," the old man said.
As they went up the hill in the dark, the wind at their backs, the storm blowing past them as they climbed, Anselmo did not feel lonely.
He had not been lonely since the _Ingles_ had clapped him on the shoulder.
The _Ingles_ was pleased and happy and they joked together.
The _Ingles_ said it all went well and he was not worried.
The drink in his stomach warmed him and his feet were warming now climbing.
"Not much on the road," he said to the _Ingles_.