"Hast thou seen them?"
"There is one at the camp now," Robert Jordan said.
"He came for breakfast."
"I thought I heard a shot or something like one," the gypsy said.
"I obscenity in the milk!
Did he come through here?"
"Here.
Thy post."
"_Ay, mi madre!_" the gypsy said.
"I am a poor, unlucky man."
"If thou wert not a gypsy, I would shoot thee."
"No, Roberto.
Don't say that.
I am sorry.
It was the hares.
Before daylight I heard the male thumping in the snow.
You cannot imagine what a debauch they were engaged in.
I went toward the noise but they were gone.
I followed the tracks in the snow and high up I found them together and slew them both.
Feel the fatness of the two for this time of year.
Think what the Pilar will do with those two.
I am sorry, Roberto, as sorry as thee.
Was the cavalryman killed?"
"Yes."
"By thee?"
"Yes."
"_Que tio!_" the gypsy said in open flattery.
"Thou art a veritable phenomenon."
"Thy mother!" Robert Jordan said.
He could not help grinning at the gypsy.
"Take thy hares to camp and bring us up some breakfast."
He put a hand out and felt of the hares that lay limp, long, heavy, thick-furred, big-footed and long-eared in the snow, their round dark eyes open.
"They _are_ fat," he said.
"Fat!" the gypsy said.
"There's a tub of lard on the ribs of each one.
In my life have I never dreamed of such hares."
"Go then," Robert Jordan said, "and come quickly with the breakfast and bring to me the documentation of that _requete_.
Ask Pilar for it."
"You are not angry with me, Roberto?"
"Not angry.
Disgusted that you should leave your post.
Suppose it had been a troop of cavalry?"
"_Redios_," the gypsy said.
"How reasonable you are."
"Listen to me.
You cannot leave a post again like that.
Never.
I do not speak of shooting lightly."
"Of course not.
And another thing.