"Thou," he said, "and thy violence."
"What do you go to do with the horses?" Agustin said.
"Look to them," Pablo said.
"Befoul them," Agustin said. "Horse lover." "I care for them very much," Pablo said.
"Even from behind they are handsomer and have more sense than these people.
Divert yourselves," he said and grinned.
"Speak to them of the bridge, _Ingles_. Explain their duties in the attack.
Tell them how to conduct the retreat.
Where will you take them, _Ingles_, after the bridge?
Where will you take your patriots?
I have thought of it all day while I have been drinking."
"What have you thought?" Agustin asked.
"What have I thought?" Pablo said and moved his tongue around exploringly inside his lips. "_Que te importa_, what have I thought."
"Say it," Agustin said to him.
"Much," Pablo said.
He pulled the blanket coat over his head, the roundness of his head protruding now from the dirty yellow folds of the blanket.
"I have thought much."
"What?" Agustin said.
"What?"
"I have thought you are a group of illusioned people," Pablo said.
"Led by a woman with her brains between her thighs and a foreigner who comes to destroy you."
"Get out," Pilar shouted at him.
"Get out and fist yourself into the snow.
Take your bad milk out of here, you horse exhausted _maricon_."
"Thus one talks," Agustin said admiringly, but absent-mindedly.
He was worried.
"I go," said Pablo.
"But I will be back shortly."
He lifted the blanket over the door of the cave and stepped out.
Then from the door he called, "It's still falling, _Ingles_."
17
The only noise in the cave now was the hissing from the hearth where snow was falling through the hole in the roof onto the coals of the fire.
"Pilar," Fernando said.
"Is there more of the stew?"
"Oh, shut up," the woman said.
But Maria took Fernando's bowl over to the big pot set back from the edge of the fire and ladled into it.
She brought it over to the table and set it down and then patted Fernando on the shoulder as he bent to eat.
She stood for a moment beside him, her hand on his shoulder.
But Fernando did not look up.
He was devoting himself to the stew.
Agustin stood beside the fire.
The others were seated.
Pilar sat at the table opposite Robert Jordan.
"Now, _Ingles_," she said, "you have seen how he is."
"What will he do?" Robert Jordan asked.
"Anything," the woman looked down at the table.
"Anything.
He is capable of doing anything."
"Where is the automatic rifle?" Robert Jordan asked.
"There in the corner wrapped in the blanket," Primitivo said.