"Very little," said Anselmo scornfully. "Very little in my judgment. To steal, yes. To eat well, yes. To murder, yes. To fight, no."
"You are an old man who will make himself trouble with his mouth."
"I am an old man who is afraid of no one," Anselmo told him. "Also I am an old man without horses."
"You are an old man who may not live long."
"I am an old man who will live until I die," Anselmo said. "And I am not afraid of foxes."
Pablo said nothing but picked up the pack.
"Nor of wolves either," Anselmo said, picking up the other pack. "If thou art a wolf."
"Shut thy mouth," Pablo said to him. "Thou art an old man who always talks too much."
"And would do whatever he said he would do," Anselmo said, bent under the pack. "And who now is hungry. And thirsty. Go on, guerilla leader with the sad face. Lead us to something to eat."
It is starting badly enough, Robert Jordan thought. But Anselmo's a man. They are wonderful when they are good, he thought. There is no people like them when they are good and when they go bad
there is no people that is worse. Anselmo must have known what he was doing when he brought us here. But I don't like it. I don't like any of it.
The only good sign was that Pablo was carrying the pack and that he had given him the carbine. Perhaps he is always like that, Robert Jordan thought. Maybe he is just one of the gloomy ones.
No, he said to himself, don't fool yourself. You do not know how he was before; but you do know that he is going bad fast and without hiding it. When he starts to hide it he will have made a decision. Remember that, he told himself. The first friendly thing he does, he will have made a decision. They are awfully good horses, though, he thought, beautiful horses. I wonder what could make me feel the way those horses make Pablo feel. The old man was right. The horses made him rich and as soon as he was rich he wanted to enjoy life. Pretty soon he'll feel bad because he can't join the Jockey Club, I guess, he thought. Pauvre Pablo. Il a manque son Jockey.
That idea made him feel better. He grinned, looking at the two bent backs and the big packs ahead of him moving through the trees. He had not made any jokes with himself all day and now that he had made one he felt much better. You're getting to be as all the rest of them, he told himself. You're getting gloomy, too. He'd certainly been solemn and gloomy with Golz. The job had overwhelmed him a little. Slightly overwhelmed, he thought. Plenty overwhelmed. Golz was gay and he had wanted him to be gay too before he left, but he hadn't been.
All the best ones, when you thought it over, were gay. It was much better to be gay and it was a sign of something too. It was like having immortality while you were still alive. That was a complicated one. There were not many of them left though. No, there were not many of the gay ones left. There were very damned few of them left. And if you keep on thinking like that, my boy, you won't be left either. Turn off the thinking now, old timer, old comrade. You're a bridge-blower now. Not a thinker. Man, I'm hungry, he thought. I hope Pablo eats well.
2
That was the camp all right and it was a good camp. You did not see it at all until you were up to it and Robert Jordan knew it could not be spotted from the air. Nothing would show from above. It was as well hidden as a bear's den. But it seemed to be little better guarded. He looked at it carefully as they came up.
There was a large cave in the rim-rock formation and beside the opening a man sat with his back against the rock, his legs stretched out on the ground and his carbine leaning against the rock. He was cutting away on a stick with a knife and he stared at them as they came up, then went on whittling.
"Hola ," said the seated man. "What is this that comes?"
"The old man and a dynamiter," Pablo told him and lowered the pack inside the entrance to the cave. Anselmo lowered his pack, too, and Robert Jordan unslung the rifle and leaned it against the rock.
"Don't leave it so close to the cave," the whittling man, who had blue eyes in a dark, good-looking lazy gypsy face, the color of smoked leather, said. "There's a fire in there."
"Get up and put it away thyself," Pablo said. "Put it by that tree."
The gypsy did not move but said something unprintable, then, "Leave it there. Blow thyself up," he said lazily. "Twill cure thy diseases."
"What do you make?" Robert Jordan sat down by the gypsy. The gypsy showed him. It was a figure four trap and he was whittling the crossbar for it.
"For foxes," he said. "With a log for a dead-fall. It breaks their backs." He grinned at Jordan. "Like this, see?" He made a motion of the framework of the trap collapsing, the log falling, then shook his head, drew in his hand, and spread his arms to show the fox with a broken back. "Very practical," he explained.
"He catches rabbits," Anselmo said. "He is a gypsy. So if he catches rabbits he says it is foxes. If he catches a fox he would say it was an elephant."