They listened to the firing.
"Primitivo wanted to go up there," Robert Jordan said.
"Art thou crazy?" Pilar said to the flat-faced man.
"What kind of _locos_ are we producing here?"
"I wish to aid them."
"_Que va_," Pilar said.
"Another romantic.
Dost thou not believe thou wilt die quick enough here without useless voyages?"
Robert Jordan looked at her, at the heavy brown face with the high Indian cheekbones, the wide-set dark eyes and the laughing mouth with the heavy, bitter upper lip.
"Thou must act like a man," she said to Primitivo.
"A grown man. You with your gray hairs and all."
"Don't joke at me," Primitivo said sullenly.
"If a man has a little heart and a little imagination--"
"He should learn to control them," Pilar said.
"Thou wilt die soon enough with us.
There is no need to seek that with strangers.
As for thy imagination. The gypsy has enough for all.
What a novel he told me."
"If thou hadst seen it thou wouldst not call it a novel," Primitivo said.
"There was a moment of great gravity."
"_Que va_," Pilar said.
"Some cavalry rode here and they rode away.
And you all make yourselves a heroism.
It is to this we have come with so much inaction."
"And this of Sordo is not grave?" Primitivo said contemptuously now.
He suffered visibly each time the firing came down the wind and he wanted either to go to the combat or have Pilar go and leave him alone.
"_Total, que?_" Pilar said.
"It has come so it has come.
Don't lose thy _cojones_ for the misfortune of another."
"Go defile thyself," Primitivo said.
"There are women of a stupidity and brutality that is insupportable."
"In order to support and aid those men poorly equipped for procreation," Pilar said, "if there is nothing to see I am going."
Just then Robert Jordan heard the plane high overhead.
He looked up and in the high sky it looked to be the same observation plane that he had seen earlier in the morning.
Now it was returning from the direction of the lines and it was moving in the direction of the high country where El Sordo was being attacked.
"There is the bad luck bird," Pilar said.
"Will it see what goes on there?"
"Surely," Robert Jordan said.
"If they are not blind."
They watched the plane moving high and silvery and steady in the sunlight.
It was coming from the left and they could see the round disks of light the two propellers made.
"Keep down," Robert Jordan said.
Then the plane was overhead, its shadows passing over the open glade, the throbbing reaching its maximum of portent.
Then it was past and headed toward the top of the valley.
They watched it go steadily on its course until it was just out of sight and then they saw it coming back in a wide dipping circle, to circle twice over the high country and then disappear in the direction of Segovia.
Robert Jordan looked at Pilar.
There was perspiration on her forehead and she shook her head: She had been holding her lower lip between her teeth.
"For each one there is something," she said.
"For me it is those."
"Thou hast not caught my fear?" Primitivo said sarcastically.