"I can always keep the whole hand steady.
Point with one finger."
Anselmo pointed.
The finger was trembling.
He looked at Robert Jordan and shook his head.
"Mine too," Robert Jordan showed him.
"Always.
That is normal."
"Not for me," Fernando said.
He put his right forefinger out to show them.
Then the left forefinger.
"Canst thou spit?" Agustin asked him and winked at Robert Jordan.
Fernando hawked and spat proudly onto the floor of the cave, then rubbed it in the dirt with his foot.
"You filthy mule," Pilar said to him.
"Spit in the fire if thou must vaunt thy courage."
"I would not have spat on the floor, Pilar, if we were not leaving this place," Fernando said primly.
"Be careful where you spit today," Pilar told him.
"It may be some place you will not be leaving."
"That one speaks like a black cat," Agustin said.
He had the nervous necessity to joke that is another form of what they all felt.
"I joke," said Pilar.
"Me too," said Agustin.
"But _me cago en la leche_, but I will be content when it starts."
"Where is the gypsy?" Robert Jordan asked Eladio.
"With the horses," Eladio said.
"You can see him from the cave mouth."
"How is he?"
Eladio grinned.
"With much fear," he said.
It reassured him to speak of the fear of another.
"Listen, _Ingles_--" Pilar began.
Robert Jordan looked toward her and as he did he saw her mouth open and the unbelieving look come on her face and he swung toward the cave mouth reaching for his pistol.
There, holding the blanket aside with one hand, the short automatic rifle muzzle with its flash-cone jutting above his shoulder, was Pablo standing short, wide, bristly-faced, his small red-rimmed eyes looking toward no one in particular.
"Thou--" Pilar said to him unbelieving.
"Thou."
"Me," said Pablo evenly.
He came into the cave.
"_Hola, Ingles_," he said.
"I have five from the bands of Elias and Alejandro above with their horses."
"And the exploder and the detonators?" Robert Jordan said.
"And the other material?"
"I threw them down the gorge into the river," Pablo said still looking at no one.
"But I have thought of a way to detonate using a grenade."
"So have I," Robert Jordan said.
"Have you a drink of anything?" Pablo asked wearily.
Robert Jordan handed him the flask and he swallowed fast, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.
"What passes with you?" Pilar asked.
"_Nada_," Pablo said, wiping his mouth again.
"Nothing.
I have come back."