Robert Jordan looked up at where Primitivo stood now in his lookout post, holding his rifle and pointing. He nodded his head but the man kept pointing, putting his hand to his ear and then pointing insistently and as though he could not possibly have been understood.
 "Do you stay with this gun and unless it is sure, sure, sure that they are coming in do not fire. And then not until they reach that shrub," Robert Jordan pointed. "Do you understand?"
 "Yes. But--"
 "No but. I will explain to thee later. I go to Primitivo."
 Anselmo was by him and he said to the old man:
 "_Viejo_, stay there with Agust璯 with the gun." He spoke slowly and unhurriedly. "He must not fire unless cavalry is actually entering. If they merely present themselves he must let them alone as we did before. If he must fire, hold the legs of the tripod firm for him and hand him the pans when they are empty."
 "Good," the old man said. "And La Granja?"
 "Later."
 Robert Jordan climbed up, over and around the gray boulders that were wet now under his hands as he pulled himself up. The sun was melting the snow on them fast. The tops of the boulders were drying and as he climbed he looked across the country and saw the pine woods and the long open glade and the dip of the country before the high mountains beyond. Then he stood beside Primitivo in a hollow behind two boulders and the short, brownfaced man said to him, "They are attacking Sordo. What is it that we do?"
 "Nothing," Robert Jordan said.
 He heard the firing clearly here and as he looked across the country, he saw, far off, across the distant valley where the country rose steeply again, a troop of cavalry ride out of the timber and cross the snowy slope riding uphill in the direction of the firing. He saw the oblong double line of men and horses dark against the snow as they forced at an angle up the hill. He watched the double line top the ridge and go into the farther timber.
 "We have to aid them," Primitivo said. His voice was dry and flat.
 "It is impossible," Robert Jordan told him. "I have expected this all morning."
 "How?"
 "They went to steal horses last night. The snow stopped and they tracked them up there."
 "But we have to aid them," Primitivo said. "We cannot leave them alone to this. Those are our comrades."
 Robert Jordan put his hand on the other man's shoulder.
 "We can do nothing," he said. "If we could I would do it."
 "There is a way to reach there from above. We can take that way with the horses and the two guns. This one below and thine. We can aid them thus."
 "Listen--" Robert Jordan said.
 "_That_ is what I listen to," Primitivo said.
 The firing was rolling in overlapping waves. Then they heard the noise of hand grenades heavy and sodden in the dry rolling of the automatic rifle fire.
 "They are lost," Robert Jordan said. "They were lost when the snow stopped. If we go there we are lost, too. It is impossible to divide what force we have."
 There was a gray stubble of beard stippled over Primitivo's jaws, his lip and his neck. The rest of his face was flat brown with a broken, flattened nose and deep-set gray eyes, and watching him Robert Jordan saw the stubble twitching at the corners of his mouth and over the cord of his throat.
 "Listen to it," he said. "It is a massacre."
 "If they have surrounded the hollow it is that," Robert Jordan said. "Some may have gotten out."
 "Coming on them now we could take them from behind," Primitivo said. "Let four of us go with the horses."
 "And then what? What happens after you take them from behind?"
 "We join with Sordo."
 "To die there? Look at the sun. The day is long."
 The sky was high and cloudless and the sun was hot on their backs. There were big bare patches now on the southern slope of the open glade below them and the snow was all dropped from the pine trees. The boulders below them that had been wet as the snow melted were steaming faintly now in the hot sun.
 "You have to stand it," Robert Jordan said. "_Hay que aguantarse_. There are things like this in a war."
 "But there is nothing we can do? Truly?" Primitivo looked at him and Robert Jordan knew he trusted him. "Thou couldst not send me and another with the small machine gun?"
 "It would be useless," Robert Jordan said.
 He thought he saw something that he was looking for but it was a hawk that slid down into the wind and then rose above the line of the farthest pine woods. "It would be useless if we all went," he said.
 Just then the firing doubled in intensity and in it was the heavy bumping of the hand grenades.
 "Oh, obscenity them," Primitivo said with an absolute devoutness of blasphemy, tears in his eyes and his cheeks twitching. "Oh, God and the Virgin, obscenity them in the milk of their filth."
 "Calm thyself," Robert Jordan said. "You will be fighting them soon enough. Here comes the woman."
 Pilar was climbing up to them, making heavy going of it in the boulders.
 Primitivo kept saying. "Obscenity them. Oh, God and the Virgin, befoul them," each time for firing rolled down the wind, and Robert Jordan climbed down to help Pilar up.
 "_Qu?tal_, woman," he said, taking hold of both her wrists and hoisting as she climbed heavily over the last boulder.
 "Thy binoculars," she said and lifted their strap over her head. "So it has come to Sordo?"
 "Yes."
 "_Pobre_," she said in commiseration. "Poor Sordo."
 She was breathing heavily from the climb and she took hold of Robert Jordan's hand and gripped it tight in hers as she looked out over the country.
 "How does the combat seem?"
 "Bad. Very bad."
 "He's _jodido?_"
 "I believe so."
 "_Pobre_," she said. "Doubtless because of the horses?"
 "Probably."
 "_Pobre_," Pilar said. Then, "Rafael recounted me all of an entire novel of dung about cavalry. What came?"
 "A patrol and part of a squadron."
 "Up to what point?"
 Robert Jordan pointed out where the patrol had stopped and showed her where the gun was hidden. Fr............