"You have a very beautiful face," he said to Maria. "I wish I would have had the luck to see you before your hair was cut."

"It will grow out," she said. "In six months it will be long enough."

"You should have seen her when we brought her from the train. She was so ugly it would make you sick."

"Whose woman are you?" Robert Jordan asked, trying not to pull out of it. "Are you Pablo's?"

She looked at him and laughed, then slapped him on the knee.

"Of Pablo? You have seen Pablo?"

"Well, then, of Rafael. I have seen Rafael."

"Of Rafael neither."

"Of no one," the gypsy said. "This is a very strange woman. Is of no one. But she cooks well."

"Really of no one?" Robert Jordan asked her.

"Of no one. No one. Neither in joke nor in seriousness. Nor of thee either."

"No?" Robert Jordan said and he could feel the thickness coming in his throat again. "Good. I have no time for any woman. That is true."

"Not fifteen minutes?" the gypsy asked teasingly. "Not a quarter of an hour?" Robert Jordan did not answer. He looked at the girl, Maria, and his throat felt too thick for him to trust himself to speak.

Maria looked at him and laughed, then blushed suddenly but kept on looking at him.

"You are blushing," Robert Jordan said to her. "Do you blush much?"

"Never."

"You are blushing now."

"Then I will go into the cave."

"Stay here, Maria."

"No," she said and did not smile at him. "I will go into the cave now." She picked up the iron plate they had eaten from and the four forks. She moved awkwardly as a colt moves, but with that same grace as of a young animal.

"Do you want the cups?" she asked.

Robert Jordan was still looking at her and she blushed again.

"Don't make me do that," she said. "I do not like to do that."

"Leave them," they gypsy said to her. "Here," he dipped into the stone bowl and handed the full cup to Robert Jordan who Watched the girl duck her head and go into the cave carrying the heavy iron dish.

"Thank you," Robert Jordan said. His voice was all right again, now that she was gone. "This is the last one. We've had enough of this."

"We will finish the bowl," the gypsy said. "There is over half a skin. We packed it in on one of the horses."

"That was the last raid of Pablo," Anselmo said. "Since then he has done nothing."

"How many are you?" Robert Jordan asked.

"We are seven and there are two women."

"Two?"

"Yes. The mujer of Pablo."

"And she?"

"In the cave. The girl can cook a little. I said she cooks well to please her. But mostly she helps the mujer of Pablo."

"And how is she, the mujer of Pablo?"

"Something barbarous," the gypsy grinned. "Something very barbarous. If you think Pablo is ugly you should see his woman. But brave. A hundred times braver than Pablo. But something barbarous."

"Pablo was brave in the beginning," Anselmo said. "Pablo was something serious in the beginning."

"He killed more people than the cholera," the gypsy said. "At the start of the movement, Pablo killed more people than the typhoid fever."

"But since a long time he is muy flojo," Anselmo said. "He is very flaccid. He is very much afraid to die."

"It is possible that it is because he has killed so many at the beginning," the gypsy said philosophically. "Pablo killed more than the bubonic plague."

"That and the riches," Anselmo said. "Also he drinks very much. Now he would like to retire like a matador de toros. Like a bullfighter. But he cannot retire."

"If he crosses to the other side of the lines they will take his horses and make him go in the army," the gypsy said. "In me there is no love for being in the army either."

"Nor is there in any other gypsy," Anselmo said.

"Why should there be?" the gypsy asked. "Who wants to be in an army? Do we make the revolution to be in an army? I am willing to fight but not to be in an army."

"Where are the others?" asked Robert Jordan. He felt comfortable and sleepy now from the wine and lying back on the floor of the forest he saw through the tree tops the small afternoon clouds of the mountains moving slowly in the high Spanish sky.

"There are two asleep in the cave," the gypsy said. "Two are on guard above where we have the gun. One is on guard below. They are probably all asleep."

Robert Jordan rolled over on his side.

"What kind of a gun is it?"

"A very rare name," the gypsy said. "It has gone away from me for the moment. It is a machine gun."

It must be an automatic rifle, Robert Jordan thought.

"How much does it weigh?" he asked.

"One man can carry it but it is heavy. It has three legs that fold. We got it in the last serious raid. The one before the wine."

"How many rounds have you for it?"

"An infinity," the gypsy said. "One whole case of an unbelievable heaviness."

Sounds like about five hundred rounds, Robert Jordan thought.

"Does it feed from a pan or a belt?"

"From round iron cans on the top of the gun."

Hell, it's a Lewis gun, Robert Jordan thought.

"Do you know anything about a machine gun?" he asked the old man.

"Nada," said Anselmo. "Nothing."

"And thou?" to the gypsy.

"That they fire with much rapidity and become so hot the barrel burns the hand that touches it," the gypsy said proudly.

"Every one knows that," Anselmo said with contempt.

"Perhaps," the gypsy said. "But he asked me to tell what I know about a maquina and I told him." Then he added, "Also, unlike an ordinary rifle, they continue to fire as long as you exert pressure on the trigger."

"Unless they jam, run out of ammunition or get so hot they melt," Robert Jordan said in English.

"What do you say?" Anselmo asked him.

"Nothing," Robert Jordan said. "I was only looking into the future in English."

"That is something truly rare," the gypsy said. "Looking into the future in Ingles. Can you read in the palm of the hand?"

"No," Robert Jordan said and he dipped another cup of wine. "But if thou canst I wish thee would read in the palm of my hand and tell me what is going to pass in the next three days."

"The mujer of Pablo reads in the hands," the gypsy said. "But she is so irritable and of such a barbarousness that I do not know if she will do it."

Robert Jordan sat up now and took a swallow of the wine.

"Let us see the mujer of Pablo now," he said. "If it is that bad let us get it over with."

"I would not disturb her," Rafael said. "She has a strong hatred for me."

"Why?"

"She treats me as a time waster."

"What injustice," Anselmo taunted.

"She is against gypsies."

"What an error," Anselmo said.

"She has gypsy blood," Rafael said. "She knows of what she speaks." He grinned. "But she has a tongue that scalds and that bites like a bull whip. With this tongue she takes the hide from any one. In strips. She is of an unbelievable barbarousness."

"How does she get along with the girl, Maria?" Robert Jordan asked.

"Good. She likes the girl. But let any one come near her seriously-" He shook his head and clucked with his tongue.

"She is very good with the girl," Anselmo said. "She takes good care of her."

"When we picked the girl up at the time of the train she was very strange," Rafael said. "She would not speak and she cried all the time and if any one touched her she would shiver like a wet dog. Only lately has she been better. Lately she has been much better. Today she was fine. Just now, talking to you, she was very good. We would have left her after the train. Certainly it was not worth being delayed by something so sad and ugly and apparently worthless. But the old woman tied a rope to her and when the girl thought she could not go further, the old woman beat her with the end of the rope to make her go. Then when she could not really go further, the old woman carried her over her shoulder. When the old woman could not carry her, I carried her. We were going up that hill breast high in the gorse and heather. And when I could no longer carry her, Pablo carried her. But what the old woman had to say to us to make us do it!" He shook his head at the memory. "It is true that the girl is long in the legs but is not heavy. The bones are light and she weighs little. But she weighs enough when we had to carry her and stop to fire and then carry her again with the old woman lashing at Pablo with the rope and carrying his rifle, putting it in his hand when he would drop the girl, making him pick her up again and loading the gun for him while she cursed him; taking the shells from his pouches and shoving them down into the magazine and cursing him. The dusk was coming well on then and when the night came it was all right. But it was lucky that they had no cavalry."