Agustin looked over at him suddenly.
"_Que pasa?_" he asked.
Robert Jordan put his hand over his own mouth and went on listening.
There it came again.
It came faint, muted, dry and far away.
But there was no mistaking it now.
It was the precise, crackling, curling roll of automatic rifle fire.
It sounded as though pack after pack of miniature firecrackers were going off at a distance that was almost out of hearing.
Robert Jordan looked up at Primitivo who had his head up now, his face looking toward them, his hand cupped to his ear.
As he looked Primitivo pointed up the mountain toward the highest country.
"They are fighting at El Sordo's," Robert Jordan said.
"Then let us go to aid them," Agustin said.
"Collect the people. _Vamonos_."
"No," Robert Jordan said.
"We stay here."
25
Robert Jordan looked up at where Primitivo stood now in his lookout post, holding his rifle and pointing.
He nodded his head but the man kept pointing, putting his hand to his ear and then pointing insistently and as though he could not possibly have been understood.
"Do you stay with this gun and unless it is sure, sure, sure that they are coming in do not fire.
And then not until they reach that shrub," Robert Jordan pointed.
"Do you understand?"
"Yes.
But--"
"No but.
I will explain to thee later.
I go to Primitivo."
Anselmo was by him and he said to the old man:
"_Viejo_, stay there with Agustin with the gun."
He spoke slowly and unhurriedly.
"He must not fire unless cavalry is actually entering.
If they merely present themselves he must let them alone as we did before.
If he must fire, hold the legs of the tripod firm for him and hand him the pans when they are empty."
"Good," the old man said.
"And La Granja?"
"Later."
Robert Jordan climbed up, over and around the gray boulders that were wet now under his hands as he pulled himself up.
The sun was melting the snow on them fast.
The tops of the boulders were drying and as he climbed he looked across the country and saw the pine woods and the long open glade and the dip of the country before the high mountains beyond.
Then he stood beside Primitivo in a hollow behind two boulders and the short, brownfaced man said to him,
"They are attacking Sordo.
What is it that we do?"
"Nothing," Robert Jordan said.
He heard the firing clearly here and as he looked across the country, he saw, far off, across the distant valley where the country rose steeply again, a troop of cavalry ride out of the timber and cross the snowy slope riding uphill in the direction of the firing.
He saw the oblong double line of men and horses dark against the snow as they forced at an angle up the hill.
He watched the double line top the ridge and go into the farther timber.
"We have to aid them," Primitivo said.
His voice was dry and flat.
"It is impossible," Robert Jordan told him.
"I have expected this all morning."
"How?"