When thy man is eliminated, cross the bridge to me.
I will have the packs down there and thou wilt do as I tell thee in the placing of the charges.
Everything I will tell thee.
If aught happens to me do it thyself as I showed thee.
Take thy time and do it well, wedging all securely with the wooden wedges and lashing the grenades firmly."
"It is all clear to me," Anselmo said.
"I remember it all.
Now I go.
Keep thee well covered, _Ingles_, when daylight comes."
"When thou firest," Robert Jordan said, "take a rest and make very sure.
Do not think of it as a man but as a target, _de acuerdo?_ Do not shoot at the whole man but at a point.
Shoot for the exact center of the belly--if he faces thee.
At the middle of the back, if he is looking away.
Listen, old one.
When I fire if the man is sitting down he will stand up before he runs or crouches.
Shoot then.
If he is still sitting down shoot.
Do not wait.
But make sure.
Get to within fifty yards.
Thou art a hunter.
Thou hast no problem."
"I will do as thou orderest," Anselmo said.
"Yes.
I order it thus," Robert Jordan said.
I'm glad I remembered to make it an order, he thought.
That helps him out.
That takes some of the curse off.
I hope it does, anyway.
Some of it.
I had forgotten about what he told me that first day about the killing.
"It is thus I have ordered," he said.
"Now go."
"_Me voy_," said Anselmo.
"Until soon, _Ingles_."
"Until soon, old one," Robert Jordan said.
He remembered his father in the railway station and the wetness of that farewell and he did not say _Salud_ nor good-by nor good luck nor anything like that.
"Hast wiped the oil from the bore of thy gun, old one?" he whispered.
"So it will not throw wild?"
"In the cave," Anselmo said.
"I cleaned them all with the pullthrough."
"Then until soon," Robert Jordan said and the old man went off, noiseless on his rope-soled shoes, swinging wide through the trees.
Robert Jordan lay on the pine-needle floor of the forest and listened to the first stirring in the branches of the pines of the wind that would come with daylight.
He took the clip out of the submachine gun and worked the lock back and forth.
Then he turned the gun, with the lock open and in the dark he put the muzzle to his lips and blew through the barrel, the metal tasting greasy and oily as his tongue touched the edge of the bore.
He laid the gun across his forearm, the action up so that no pine needles or rubbish could get in it, and shucked all the cartridges out of the clip with his thumb and onto a handkerchief he had spread in front of him.
Then, feeling each cartridge in the dark and turning it in his fingers, he pressed and slid them one at a time back into the clip.
Now the clip was heavy again in his hand and he slid it back into the submachine gun and felt it click home.
He lay on his belly behind the pine trunk, the gun across his left forearm and watched the point of light below him.
Sometimes he could not see it and then he knew that the man in the sentry box had moved in front of the brazier.