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"Yes. It is a name I can never dominate. We had two with a machine gun. They were sent also by the army. They could not get the gun away and lost it. Certainly it weighed no more than that girl and if the old woman had been over them they would have gotten it away." He shook his head remembering, then went on. "Never in my life have I seen such a thing as when the explosion Was produced. The train was coming steadily. We saw it far away. And I had an excitement so great that I cannot tell it. We saw steam from it and then later came the noise of the whistle. Then it came chu-chu-chu-chu-chu-chu steadily larger and larger and then, at the moment of the explosion, the front wheels of the engine rose up and all of the earth seemed to rise in a great cloud of blackness and a roar and the engine rose high in the cloud of dirt and of the Wooden ties rising in the air as in a dream and then it fell onto its side like a great wounded animal and there was an explosion of white steam before the clods of the other explosion had ceased to fall on us and the _m醧uina_ commenced to speak ta-tat-tat-ta!" went the gypsy shaking his two clenched fists up and down in front of him, thumbs up, on an imaginary machine gun. "Ta! Ta! Tat! Tat! Tat! Ta!" he exulted. "Never in my life have I seen such a thing, with the troops running from the train and the _m醧uina_ speaking into them and the men falling. It was then that I put my hand on the _m醧uina_ in my excitement and discovered that the barrel burned and at that moment the old woman slapped me on the side of the face and said, 'Shoot, you fool! Shoot or I will kick your brains in!' Then I commenced to shoot but it was very hard to hold my gun steady and the troops were running up the far hill. Later, after we had been down at the train to see what there was to take, an officer forced some troops back toward us at the point of a pistol. He kept waving the pistol and shouting at them and we were all shooting at him but no one hit him. Then some troops lay down and commenced firing and the officer walked up and down behind them with his pistol and still we could not hit him and the _m醧uina_ could not fire on him because of the position of the train. This officer shot two men as they lay and still they would not get up and he was cursing them and finally they got up, one two and three at a time and came running toward us and the train. Then they lay flat again and fired. Then we left, with the _m醧uina_ still speaking over us as we left. It was then I found the girl where she had run from the train to the rocks and she ran with us. It was those troops who hunted us until that night." "It must have been something very hard," Anselmo said. "Of much emotion." "It was the only good thing we have done," said a deep voice. "What are you doing now, you lazy drunken obscene unsayable son of an unnameable unmarried gypsy obscenity? What are you doing?" Robert Jordan saw a woman of about fifty almost as big as Pablo, almost as wide as she was tall, in black peasant skirt and waist, with heavy wool socks on heavy legs, black rope-soled shoes and a brown face like a model for a granite monument. She had big but nice-looking hands and her thick curly black hair was twisted into a knot on her neck. "Answer me," she said to the gypsy, ignoring the others. "I was talking to these comrades. This one comes as a dynamiter." "I know all that," the _mujer_ of Pablo said. "Get out of here now and relieve Andr閟 who is on guard at the top." "_Me voy_," the gypsy said. "I go." He turned to Robert Jordan. "I will see thee at the hour of eating." "Not even in a joke," said the woman to him. "Three times you have eaten today according to my count. Go now and send me Andr閟. "_Hola_," she said to Robert Jordan and put out her hand and smiled. "How are you and how is everything in the Republic?" "Good," he said and returned her strong hand grip. "Both with me and with the Republic." "I am happy," she told him. She was looking into his face and smiling and he noticed she had fine gray eyes. "Do you come for us to do another train?" "No," said Robert Jordan, trusting her instantly. "For a bridge." "_No es nada_," she said. "A bridge is nothing. When do we do another train now that we have horses?" "Later. This bridge is of great importance." "The girl told me your comrade who was with us at the train is dead." "Yes." "What a pity. Never have I seen such an explosion. He was a man of talent. He pleased me very much. It is not possible to do another train now? There are many men here now in the hills. Too many. It is already hard to get food. It would be better to get out. And we have horses." "We have to do this bridge." "Where is it?" "Quite close." "All the better," the _mujer_ of Pablo said. "Let us blow all the bridges there are here and get out. I am sick of this place. Here is too much concentration of people. No good can come of it. Here is a stagnation that is repugnant." She sighted Pablo through the trees. "_Borracho!_" she called to him. "Drunkard. Rotten drunkard!" She turned back to Robert Jordan cheerfully. "He's taken a leather wine bottle to drink alone in the woods," she said. "He's drinking all the time. This life is ruining him. Young man, I am very content that you have come." She clapped him on the back. "Ah," she said. "You're bigger than you look," and ran her hand over his shoulder, feeling the muscle under the flannel shirt. "Good. I am very content that you have come." "And I equally." "We will understand each other," she said. "Have a cup of wine." "We have already had some," Robert Jordan said. "But, will you?" "Not until dinner," she said. "It gives me heartburn." Then she sighted Pablo again. "_Borracho!_" she shouted. "Drunkard!" She turned to Robert Jordan and shook her head. "He was a very good man," she told him. "But now he is terminated. And listen to me about another thing. Be very good and careful about the girl. The Maria. She has had a bad time. Understandest thou?" "Yes. Why do you say this?" "I saw how she was from seeing thee when she came into the cave. I saw her watching thee before she came out." "I joked with her a little." "She was in a very bad state," the woman of Pablo said. "Now she is better, she ought to get out of here." "Clearly, she can be sent through the lines with Anselmo." "You and the Anselmo can take her when this terminates." Robert Jordan felt the ache in his throat and his voice thickening. "That might be done," he said. The _mujer_ of Pablo looked at him and shook her head. "Ayee. Ayee," she said. "Are all men like that?" "I said nothing. She is beautiful, you know that." "No she is not beautiful. But she begins to be beautiful, you mean," the woman of Pablo said. "Men. It is a shame to us women that we make them. No. In seriousness. Are there not homes to care for such as her under the Republic?" "Yes," said Robert Jordan. "Good places. On the coast near Valencia. In other places too. There they will treat her well and she can work with children. There are the children from evacuated villages. They will teach her the work." "That is what I want," the _mujer_ of Pablo said. "Pablo has a sickness for her already. It is another thing which destroys him. It lies on him like a sickness when he sees her. It is best that she goes now." "We can take her after this is over." "And you will be careful of her now if I trust you? I speak to you as though I knew you for a long time." "It is like that," Robert Jordan said, "when people understand one another." "Sit down," the woman of Pablo said. "I do not ask any promise because what will happen, will happen. Only if you will not take her out, then I ask a promise." "Why if I would not take her?" "Because I do not want her crazy here after you will go. I have had her crazy before and I have enough without that." "We will take her after the bridge," Robert Jordan said. "If we are alive after the bridge, we will take her." "I do not like to hear you speak in that manner. That manner of speaking never brings luck." "I spoke in that manner only to make a promise," Robert Jordan said. "I am not of those who speak gloomily." "Let me see thy hand," the woman said. Robert Jordan put his hand out and the woman opened it, held it in her own big hand, rubbed her thumb over it and looked at it, carefully, then dropped it. She stood up. He got up too and she looked at him without smiling. "What did you see in it?" Robert Jordan asked her. "I don't believe in it. You won't scare me." "Nothing," she told him. "I saw nothing in it." "Yes you did. I am only curious. I do not believe in such things." "In what do you believe?" "In many things but not in that." "In what?" "In my work." "Yes, I saw that." "Tell me what else you saw." "I saw nothing else," she said bitterly. "The bridge is very difficult you said?" "No. I said it is very important." "But it can be difficult?" "Yes. And now I go down to look at it. How many men have you here?" "Five that are any good. The gypsy is worthless although his intentions are good. He has a good heart. Pablo I no longer trust." "How many men has El Sordo that are good?" "Perhaps eight. We will see tonight. He is coming here. He is a very practical man. He also has some dynamite. Not very much, though. You will speak with him." 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He is a neighbor. Also a friend as well as a comrade." "What do you think of him?" "He is a very good man. Also very practical. In the business of the train he was enormous." "And in the other bands?" "Advising them in time, it should be possible to unite fifty rifles of a certain dependability." "How dependable?" "Dependable within the gravity of the situation." "And how many cartridges per rifle?" "Perhaps twenty. Depending how many they would bring for this business. If they would come for this business. Remember thee that in this of a bridge there is no money and no loot and in thy reservations of talking, much danger, and that afterwards
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