"He has taken them," she said miserably.
"I looked at once for them.
They are gone, too."
They walked back through the woods to the entrance of the cave.
"Get some sleep," he said.
"We are better off with Pablo gone."
"I go to see Eladio."
"He will have gone another way."
"I go anyway.
I have betrayed thee with my lack of smartness."
"Nay," he said.
"Get some sleep, woman.
We must be under way at four."
He went into the cave with her and brought out the two sacks, carrying them held together in both arms so that nothing could spill from the slits.
"Let me sew them up."
"Before we start," he said softly.
"I take them not against you but so that I can sleep."
"I must have them early to sew them."
"You shall have them early," he told her.
"Get some sleep, woman."
"Nay," she said.
"I have failed thee and I have failed the Republic."
"Get thee some sleep, woman," he told her gently.
"Get thee some sleep."
34
The fascists held the crests of the hills here.
Then there was a valley that no one held except for a fascist post in a farmhouse with its outbuildings and its barn that they had fortified.
Andres, on his way to Golz with the message from Robert Jordan, made a wide circle around this post in the dark.
He knew where there was a trip wire laid that fired a set-gun and he located it in the dark, stepped over it, and started along the small stream bordered with poplars whose leaves were moving with the night wind.
A cock crowed at the farmhouse that was the fascist post and as he walked along the stream he looked back and saw, through the trunks of the poplars, a light showing at the lower edge of one of the windows of the farmhouse.
The night was quiet and clear and Andres left the stream and struck across the meadow.
There were four haycocks in the meadow that had stood there ever since the fighting in July of the year before.
No one had ever carried the hay away and the four seasons that had passed had flattened the cocks and made the hay worthless.
Andres thought what a waste it was as he stepped over a trip wire that ran between two of the haycocks.
But the Republicans would have had to carry the hay up the steep Guadarrama slope that rose beyond the meadow and the fascists did not need it, I suppose, he thought.
They have all the hay they need and all the grain.
They have much, he thought.
But we will give them a blow tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow morning we will give them something for Sordo.
What barbarians they are!
But in the morning there will be dust on the road.
He wanted to get this message-taking over and be back for the attack on the posts in the morning.
Did he really want to get back though or did he only pretend he wanted to be back?
He knew the reprieved feeling he had felt when the _Ingles_ had told him he was to go with the message.
He had faced the prospect of the morning calmly.
It was what was to be done.
He had voted for it and would do it.
The wiping out of Sordo had impressed him deeply.
But, after all, that was Sordo.
That was not them.