Anselmo was now so cold that he decided he had best go to camp before it was dark. He had no fear of missing the way, but he thought it was useless to stay longer and the wind was blowing colder all the time and there was no lessening of the snow. But when he stood up and stamped his feet and looked through the driving snow at the road he did not start off up the hillside but stayed leaning against the sheltered side of the pine tree.

The Ingles told me to stay, he thought. Even now he may be on the way here and, if I leave this place, he may lose himself in the snow searching for me. All through this war we have suffered from a lack of discipline and from the disobeying of orders and I will wait a while still for the Ingles. But if he does not come soon I must go in spite of all orders for I have a report to make now, and I have much to do in these days, and to freeze here is an exaggeration and without utility.

Across the road at the sawmill smoke was coming out of the chimney and Anselmo could smell it blown toward him through the snow. The fascists are warm, he thought, and they are comfortable, and tomorrow night we will kill them. It is a strange thing and I do not like to think of it. I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travellers and ask to see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should never be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing.

These at this post are Gallegos. I know that from hearing them talk this afternoon. They cannot desert because if they do their families will be shot. Gallegos are either very intelligent or very dumb and brutal. I have known both kinds. Lister is a Gallego from the same town as Franco. I wonder what these Gallegos think of this snow now at this time of year. They have no high mountains such as these and in their country it always rains and it is always green.

A light showed in the window of the sawmill and Anselmo shivered and thought, damn that Ingles! There are the Gallegos warm and in a house here in our country, and I am freezing behind a tree and we live in a hole in the rocks like beasts in the mountain. But tomorrow, he thought, the beasts will come out of their hole and these that are now so comfortable will die warm in their blankets. As those died in the night when we raided Otero, he thought. He did not like to remember Otero.

In Otero, that night, was when he first killed and he hoped he would not have to kill in this of the suppressing of these posts. It was in Otero that Pablo knifed the sentry when Anselmo pulled the blanket over his head and the sentry caught Anselmo's foot and held it, smothered as he was in the blanket, and made a crying noise in the blanket and Anselmo had to feel in the blanket and knife him until he let go of the foot and was still. He had his knee across the man's throat to keep him silent and he was knifing into the bundle when Pablo tossed the bomb through the window into the room where the men of the post were all sleeping. And when the flash came it was as though the whole world burst red and yellow before your eyes and two more bombs were in already. Pablo had pulled the pins and tossed them quickly through the window, and those who were not killed in their beds were killed as they rose from bed when the second bomb exploded. That was in the great days of Pablo when he scourged the country like a tartar and no fascist post was safe at night.

And now, he is as finished and as ended as a boar that has been altered, Anselmo thought, and, when the altering has been accomplished and the squealing is over you cast the two stones away and the boar, that is a boar no longer, goes snouting and rooting up to them and eats them. No, he is not that bad, Anselmo grinned, one can think too badly even of Pablo. But he is ugly enough and changed enough.

It is too cold, he thought. That the Ingles should come and that I should not have to kill in this of the posts. These four Gallegos and their corporal are for those who like the killing. The Ingles said that. I will do it if it is my duty but the Ingles said that I would be with him at the bridge and that this would be left to others. At the bridge there will be a battle and, if I am able to endure the battle, then I will have done all that an old man may do in this war. But let the Ingles come now, for I am cold and to see the light in the mill where I know that the Gallegos are warm makes me colder still. I wish that I were in my own house again and that this war were over. But you have no house now, he thought. We must win this war before you can ever return to your house.

Inside the sawmill one of the soldiers was sitting on his bunk and greasing his boots. Another lay in his bunk sleeping. The third was cooking and the corporal was reading a paper. Their helmets hung on nails driven into the wall and their rifles leaned against the plank wall.

"What kind of country is this where it snows when it is almost June?" the soldier who was sitting on the bunk said.

"It is a phenomenon," the corporal said.

"We are in the moon of May," the soldier who was cooking said. "The moon of May has not yet terminated."

"What kind of a country is it where it snows in May?" the soldier on the bunk insisted.

"In May snow is no rarity in these mountains," the corporal said. "I have been colder in Madrid in the month of May than in any other month."

"And hotter, too," the soldier who was cooking said.

"May is a month of great contrasts in temperature," the corporal said. "Here, in Castile, May is a month of great heat but it can have much cold."

"Or rain," the soldier on the bunk said. "In this past May it rained almost every day."

"It did not," the soldier who was cooking said. "And anyway this past May was the moon of April."

"One could go crazy listening to thee and thy moons," the corporal said. "Leave this of the moons alone."

"Any one who lives either by the sea or by the land knows that it is the moon and not the month which counts," the soldier who was cooking said. "Now for example, we have just started the moon of May. Yet it is coming on June."

"Why then do we not get definitely behind in the seasons?" the corporal said. "The whole proposition gives me a headache."

"You are from a town," the soldier who was cooking said. "You are from Lugo. What would you know of the sea or of the land?"

"One learns more in a town than you analfabetos learn in thy sea or thy land."

"In this moon the first of the big schools of sardines come," the soldier who was cooking said. "In this moon the sardine boats will be outfitting and the mackerel will have gone north."

"Why are you not in the navy if you come from Noya?" the corporal asked.

"Because I am not inscribed from Noya but from Negreira, where I was born. And from Negreira, which is up the river Tambre, they take you for the army."

"Worse luck," said the corporal.

"Do not think the navy is without peril," the soldier who was sitting on the bunk said. "Even without the possibility of combat that is a dangerous coast in the winter."

"Nothing can be worse than the army," the corporal said.

"And you a corporal," the soldier who was cooking said. "What a way of speaking is that?"

"Nay," the corporal said. "I mean for dangers. I mean the endurance of bombardments, the necessity to attack, the life of the parapet."

"Here we have little of that," the soldier on the bunk said.

"By the Grace of God," the corporal said. "But who knows when we will be subject to it again? Certainly we will not have something as easy as this forever!"