"I did not like it," Fernando said quietly. "I did not like Valencia."

"Yet they speak of the mule as stubborn," the woman said. "Clean up, Maria, that we may go."

As she said this they heard the first sound of the planes returning.

9

They stood in the mouth of the cave and watched them. The bombers were high now in fast, ugly arrow-heads beating the sky apart with the noise of their motors. They are shaped like sharks, Robert Jordan thought, the wide-finned, sharp-nosed sharks of the Gulf Stream. But these, wide-finned in silver, roaring, the light mist of their propellers in the sun, these do not move like sharks. They move like no thing there has ever been. They move like mechanized doom.

You ought to write, he told himself. Maybe you will again some time. He felt Maria holding to his arm. She was looking up and he said to her, "What do they look like to you, guapa?"

"I don't know," she said. "Death, I think."

"They look like planes to me," the woman of Pablo said. "'Where are the little ones?"

"They may be crossing at another part," Robert Jordan said. "Those bombers are too fast to have to wait for them and have come back alone. We never follow them across the lines to fight. There aren't enough planes to risk it."

Just then three Heinkel fighters in V formation came low over the clearing coming toward them, just over the tree tops, like clattering, wing-tilting, pinch-nosed ugly toys, to enlarge suddenly, fearfully to their actual size; pouring past in a whining roar. They were so low that from the cave mouth all of them could see the pilots, helmeted, goggled, a scarf blowing back from behind the patrol leader's head.

"Those can see the horses," Pablo said.

"Those can see thy cigarette butts," the woman said. "Let fall the blanket."

No more planes came over. The others must have crossed farther up the range and when the droning was gone they went out of the cave into the open.

The sky was empty now and high and blue and clear.

"It seems as though they were a dream that you wake from," Maria said to Robert Jordan. There was not even the last almost unheard hum that comes like a finger faintly touching and leaving and touching again after the sound is gone almost past hearing.

"They are no dream and you go in and clean up," Pilar said to her. "What about it?" she turned to Robert Jordan. "Should we ride or walk?"

Pablo looked at her and grunted.

"As you will," Robert Jordan said.

"Then let us walk," she said. "I would like it for the liver."

"Riding is good for the liver."

"Yes, but hard on the buttocks. We will walk and thou-" She turned to Pablo. "Go down and count thy beasts and see they have not flown away with any."

"Do you want a horse to ride?" Pablo asked Robert Jordan.

"No. Many thanks. What about the girl?"

"Better for her to walk," Pilar said. "She'll get stiff in too many places and serve for nothing."

Robert Jordan felt his face reddening.

"Did you sleep well?" Pilar asked. Then said, "It is true that there is no sickness. There could have been. I know not why there wasn't. There probably still is God after all, although we have abolished Him. Go on," she said to Pablo. "This does not concern thee. This is of people younger than thee. Made of other material. Get on." Then to Robert Jordan, "Agustin is looking after thy things. We go when he comes."

It was a clear, bright day and warm now in the sun. Robert Jordan looked at the big, brown-faced woman with her kind, widely set eyes and her square, heavy face, lined and pleasantly ugly, the eyes merry, but the face sad until the lips moved. He looked at her and then at the man, heavy and stolid, moving off through the trees toward the corral. The woman, too, was looking after him.

"Did you make love?" the woman said.

"What did she say?"

"She would not tell me."

"I neither."

"Then you made love," the woman said. "Be as careful with her as you can."

"What if she has a baby?"

"That will do no harm," the woman said. "That will do less harm."

"This is no place for that."

"She will not stay here. She will go with you."

"And where will I go? I can't take a woman where I go."

"Who knows? You may take two where you go."

"That is no way to talk."

"Listen," the woman said. "I am no coward, but I see things very clearly in the early morning and I think there are many that we know that are alive now who will never see another Sunday."

"In what day are we?"

"Sunday."

"Que va," said Robert Jordan. "Another Sunday is very far. If we see Wednesday we are all right. But I do not like to hear thee talk like this."

"Every one needs to talk to some one," the woman said. "Before we had religion and other nonsense. Now for every one there should be some one to whom one can speak frankly, for all the valor that one could have one becomes very alone."

"We are not alone. We are all together."

"The sight of those machines does things to one," the woman said. "We are nothing against such machines."

"Yet we can beat them."

"Look," the woman said. "I confess a sadness to you, but do not think I lack resolution. Nothing has happened to my resolution."

"The sadness will dissipate as the sun rises. It is like a mist."

"Clearly," the woman said. "If you want it that way. Perhaps it came from talking that foolishness about Valencia. And that failure of a man who has gone to look at his horses. I wounded him much with the story. Kill him, yes. Curse him, yes. But wound him, no."

"How came you to be with him?"

"How is one with any one? In the first days of the movement and before too, he was something. Something serious. But now he is finished. The plug has been drawn and the wine has all run out of the skin."

"I do not like him."

"Nor does he like you, and with reason. Last night I slept with him." She smiled now and shook her head. " Vamos a ver," she said. "I said to him, 'Pablo, why did you not kill the foreigner?

"'He's a good boy, Pilar, he said. 'He's a good boy.

"So I said, 'You understand now that I command?

"'Yes, Pilar. Yes, he said. Later in the night I hear him awake and he is crying. He is crying in a short and ugly manner as a man cries when it is as though there is an animal inside that is shaking him.

"'What passes with thee, Pablo? I said to him and I took hold of him and held him.

"'Nothing, Pilar. Nothing.

"'Yes. Something passes with thee.

"'The people, he said. 'The way they left me. The gente.

"'Yes, but they are with me, I said, 'and I am thy woman.

"'Pilar, he said, 'remember the train. Then he said, 'May God aid thee, Pilar.

"'What are you talking of God for? I said to him. 'What way is that to speak?

"'Yes, he said. 'God and the Virgen.

" Que va, God and the Virgen, I said to him. 'Is that any way to talk?

"'I am afraid to die, Pilar, he said. Tengo miedo de morir. Dost thou understand?

"'Then get out of bed, I said to him. 'There is not room in one bed for me and thee and thy fear all together.

"Then he was ashamed and was quiet and I went to sleep but, man, he's a ruin."

Robert Jordan said nothing.

"All my life I have had this sadness at intervals," the woman said. "But it is not like the sadness of Pablo. It does not affect my resolution."

"I believe that."

"It may be it is like the times of a woman," she said. "It may be it is nothing," she paused, then went on. "I put great illusion in the Republic. I believe firmly in the Republic and I have faith. I believe in it with fervor as those who have religious faith believe in the mysteries."