"Thou wilt fall and the horse cannot carry it."
"Shut up," said Pilar.
"We go to make a life with this."
"Canst ride like that, woman?" Pablo asked her from the _guardia civil_ saddle on the great bay horse.
"Like any milk peddler," Pilar told him.
"How do you go, old one?"
"Straight down.
Across the road.
Up the far slope and into the timber where it narrows."
"Across the road?"
Agustin wheeled beside him, kicking his soft-heeled, canvas shoes against the stiff, unresponding belly of one of the horses Pablo had recruited in the night.
"Yes, man.
It is the only way," Pablo said.
He handed him one of the lead ropes.
Primitivo and the gypsy had the others.
"Thou canst come at the end if thou will, _Ingles_," Pablo said.
"We cross high enough to be out of range of that _maquina_.
But we will go separately and riding much and then be together where it narrows above."
"Good," said Robert Jordan.
They rode down through the timber toward the edge of the road.
Robert Jordan rode just behind Maria.
He could not ride beside her for the timber.
He caressed the gray once with his thigh muscles, and then held him steady as they dropped down fast and sliding through the pines, telling the gray with his thighs as they dropped down what the spurs would have told him if they had been on level ground.
"Thou," he said to Maria, "go second as they cross the road.
First is not so bad though it seems bad.
Second is good.
It is later that they are always watching for."
"But thou--"
"I will go suddenly.
There will be no problem.
It is the places in line that are bad."
He was watching the round, bristly head of Pablo, sunk in his shoulders as he rode, his automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.
He was watching Pilar, her head bare, her shoulders broad, her knees higher than her thighs as her heels hooked into the bundles.
She looked back at him once and shook her head.
"Pass the Pilar before you cross the road," Robert Jordan said to Maria.
Then he was looking through the thinning trees and he saw the oiled dark of the road below and beyond it the green slope of the hillside.
We are above the culvert, he saw, and just below the height where the road drops down straight toward the bridge in that long sweep.
We are around eight hundred yards above the bridge.
That is not out of range for the Fiat in that little tank if they have come up to the bridge.
"Maria," he said.
"Pass the Pilar before we reach the road and ride wide up that slope."
She looked back at him but did not say anything.
He did not look at her except to see that she had understood.
"_Comprendes?_" he asked her.
She nodded.
"Move up," he said.
She shook her head.
"Move up!"
"Nay," she told him, turning around and shaking her head. "I go in the order that I am to go."
Just then Pablo dug both his spurs into the big bay and he plunged down the last pine-needled slope and cross the road in a pounding, sparking of shod hooves.