With the fire power of all these automatic weapons.
And another mule. No, two mules to carry ammunition.
Leave it alone, he told himself.
It is no longer cavalry.
Leave it alone.
You're building yourself an army.
Next you will want a mountain gun.
Then he thought of Julian, dead on the hill, dead now, tied across a horse there in the first troop, and as he rode down into the dark pine forest, leaving the sunlight behind him on the hill, riding now in the quiet dark of the forest, he started to say a prayer for him again.
"Hail, holy queen mother of mercy," he started.
"Our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we send up our sighs, mournings and weepings in this valley of tears--"
He went on with the prayer the horses' hooves soft on the fallen pine needles, the light coming through the tree trunks in patches as it comes through the columns of a cathedral, and as he prayed he looked ahead to see his flankers riding through the trees.
He rode out of the forest onto the yellow road that led into La Granja and the horses' hooves raised a dust that hung over them as they rode.
It powdered the dead who were tied face down across the saddles and the wounded, and those who walked beside them, were in thick dust.
It was here that Anselmo saw them ride past in their dust.
He counted the dead and the wounded and he recognized Sordo's automatic rifle.
He did not know what the poncho-wrapped bundle was which flapped against the led horse's flanks as the stirrup leathers swung but when, on his way home, he came in the dark onto the hill where Sordo had fought, he knew at once what the long poncho roll contained.
In the dark he could not tell who had been up on the hill.
But he counted those that lay there and then made off across the hills for Pablo's camp.
Walking alone in the dark, with a fear like a freezing of his heart from the feeling the holes of the bomb craters had given him, from them and from what he had found on the hill, he put all thought of the next day out of his mind.
He simply walked as fast as he could to bring the news.
And as he walked he prayed for the souls of Sordo and of all his band.
It was the first time he had prayed since the start of the movement.
"Most kind, most sweet, most clement Virgin," he prayed.
But he could not keep from thinking of the next day finally. So he thought: I will do exactly as the _Ingles_ says and as he says to do it.
But let me be close to him, O Lord, and may his instructions be exact for I do not think that I could control myself under the bombardment of the planes.
Help me, O Lord, tomorrow to comport myself as a man should in his last hours.
Help me, O Lord, to understand clearly the needs of the day.
Help me, O Lord, to dominate the movement of my legs that I should not run when the bad moment comes.
Help me, O Lord, to comport myself as a man tomorrow in the day of battle.
Since I have asked this aid of thee, please grant it, knowing I would not ask it if it were not serious, and I will ask nothing more of thee again.
Walking in the dark alone he felt much better from having prayed and he was sure, now, that he would comport himself well.
Walking now down from the high country, he went back to praying for the people of Sordo and in a short time he had reached the upper post where Fernando challenged him.
"It is I," he answered,
"Anselmo."
"Good," Fernando said.
"You know of this of Sordo, old one?" Anselmo asked Fernando, the two of them standing at the entrance of the big rocks in the dark.
"Why not?" Fernando said.
"Pablo has told us."
"He was up there?"
"Why not?" Fernando said stolidly.
"He visited the hill as soon as the cavalry left."
"He told you--"
"He told us all," Fernando said.
"What barbarians these fascists are!
We must do away with all such barbarians in Spain."
He stopped, then said bitterly, "In them is lacking all conception of dignity."
Anselmo grinned in the dark.
An hour ago he could not have imagined that he would ever smile again.
What a marvel, that Fernando, he thought.