Selected Stories of Men at War by Various Authors

Author:Various Authors [Various]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443437882
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2014-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

They had come through the heavy timber to the cup-shaped upper end of the little valley and he saw where the camp must be under the rim-rock that rose ahead of them through the trees.

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.”

“And if I catch an elephant?” the gypsy asked and showed his white teeth again and winked at Robert Jordan.

“You’d say it was a tank,” Anselmo told him.

“I’ll get a tank,” the gypsy told him. “I will get a tank. And you can say it is what you please.”

“Gypsies talk much and kill little,” Anselmo told him.

The gypsy winked at Robert Jordan and went on whittling.

Pablo had gone in out of sight in the cave. Robert Jordan hoped he had gone for food. He sat on the ground by the gypsy and the afternoon sunlight came down through the tree tops and was warm on his outstretched legs. He could smell food now

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