For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway [126]
She said, “I am asleep already.”
“I am going to sleep,” he said. “Sleep well, beloved.” Then he was asleep and happy as he slept.
But in the night he woke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken from him. He held her feeling she was all of life there was and it was true. But she was sleeping well and soundly and she did not wake. So he rolled away onto his side and pulled the robe over her head and kissed her once on her neck under the robe and then pulled the pistol lanyard up and put the pistol by his side where he could reach it handily and then he lay there in the night thinking.
21
A warm wind came with daylight and he could hear the snow melting in the trees and the heavy sound of its falling. It was a late spring morning. He knew with the first breath he drew that the snow had been only a freak storm in the mountains and it would be gone by noon. Then he heard a horse coming, the hoofs balled with the wet snow thumping dully as the horseman trotted. He heard the noise of a carbine scabbard slapping loosely and the creak of leather.
“Maria,” he said, and shook the girl’s shoulder to waken her. “Keep thyself under the robe,” and he buttoned his shirt with one hand and held the automatic pistol in the othet loosening the safety catch with his thumb. He saw the girl’s cropped head disappear with a jerk under the robe and then he saw the horseman coming through the trees. He crouched now in the robe and holding the pistol in both hands aimed it at the man as he rode toward him. He had never seen this man before.
The horseman was almost opposite him now. He was riding a big gray gelding and he wore a khaki beret, a blanket cape like a poncho, and heavy black boots. From the scabbard on the right of his saddle projected the stock and the long oblong clip of a short automatic rifle. He had a young, hard face and at this moment he saw Robert Jordan.
He reached his hand down toward the scabbard and as he swung low, turning and jerking at the scabbard, Robert Jordan saw the scarlet of the formalized device he wore on the left breast of his khaki blanket cape.
Aiming at the center of his chest, a little lower than the device, Robert Jordan fired.
The pistol roared in the snowy woods.
The horse plunged as though he had been spurred and the young man, still tugging at the scabbard, slid over toward the ground, his right foot caught in the stirrup. The horse broke off through the trees dragging him, bumping, face downward, and Robert Jordan stood up holding the pistol now in one hand.
The big gray horse was galloping through the pines. There was a broad swath in the snow where the man dragged with a scarlet streak along one side of it. People were coming out of the mouth of the cave. Robert Jordan reached down and unrolled his trousers from the pillow and began to put them on.
“Get thee dressed,” he said to Maria.
Overhead he heard the noise of a plane flying very high. Through the trees he saw where the gray horse had stopped and was standing, his rider still hanging face down from the stirrup.
“Go catch that horse,” he called to Primitivo who had started over toward him. Then, “Who was on guard at the top?”
“Rafael,” Pilar said from the cave. She stood there, her hair still down her back in two braids.
“There’s cavalry out,” Robert Jordan said. “Get your damned gun up there.”
He heard Pilar call, “Agustín,” into the cave. Then she went into the cave and then two men came running out, one with the automatic rifle with its tripod swung on his shoulder; the other with a sackful of the pans.
“Get up there with them,” Robert Jordan said to Anselmo. “You lie beside the gun and hold the legs still,” he said.
The three of them went up the trail through the woods at a run.
The sun had not yet come up over the tops of the mountains and Robert Jordan stood straight buttoning his trousers and tightening