For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway Read Free Book Online Page B

much danger, and that afterwards there must be a moving from these mountains. Many will oppose this of the bridge.”
    â€œClearly.”
    â€œIn this way it is better not to speak of it unnecessarily.”
    â€œI am in accord.”
    â€œThen after thou hast studied thy bridge we will talk tonight with El Sordo.”
    â€œI go down now with Anselmo.”
    â€œWake him then,” she said. “Do you want a carbine?”
    â€œThank you,” he told her. “It is good to have but I will not use it. I go to look, not to make disturbances. Thank you for what you have told me. I like very much your way of speaking.”
    â€œI try to speak frankly.”
    â€œThen tell me what you saw in the hand.”
    â€œNo,” she said and shook her head. “I saw nothing. Go now to thy bridge. I will look after thy equipment.”
    â€œCover it and that no one should touch it. It is better there than in the cave.”
    â€œIt shall be covered and no one shall touch it,” the woman of Pablo said. “Go now to thy bridge.”
    â€œAnselmo,” Robert Jordan said, putting his hand on the shoulder of the old man who lay sleeping, his head on his arms.
    The old man looked up. “Yes,” he said. “Of course. Let us go.”

3
    They came down the last two hundred yards, moving carefully from tree to tree in the shadows and now, through the last pines of the steep hillside, the bridge was only fifty yards away. The late afternoon sun that still came over the brown shoulder of the mountain showed the bridge dark against the steep emptiness of the gorge. It was a steel bridge of a single span and there was a sentry box at each end. It was wide enough for two motor cars to pass and it spanned, in solid-flung metal grace, a deep gorge at the bottom of which, far below, a brook leaped in white water through rocks and boulders down to the main stream of the pass.
    The sun was in Robert Jordan’s eyes and the bridge showed only in outline. Then the sun lessened and was gone and looking up through the trees at the brown, rounded height that it had gone behind, he saw, now, that he no longer looked into the glare, that the mountain slope was a delicate new green and that there were patches of old snow under the crest.
    Then he was watching the bridge again in the sudden short trueness of the little light that would be left, and studying its construction. The problem of its demolition was not difficult. As he watched he took out a notebook from his breast pocket and made several quick line sketches. As he made the drawings he did not figure the charges. He would do that later. Now he was noting the points where the explosive should be placed in order to cut the support ofthe span and drop a section of it into the gorge. It could be done unhurriedly, scientifically and correctly with a half dozen charges laid and braced to explode simultaneously; or it could be done roughly with two big ones. They would need to be very big ones, on opposite sides and should go at the same time. He sketched quickly and happily; glad at last to have the problem under his hand; glad at last actually to be engaged upon it. Then he shut his notebook, pushed the pencil into its leather holder in the edge of the flap, put the notebook in his pocket and buttoned the pocket.
    While he had sketched, Anselmo had been watching the road, the bridge and the sentry boxes. He thought they had come too close to the bridge for safety and when the sketching was finished, he was relieved.
    As Robert Jordan buttoned the flap of his pocket and then lay flat behind the pine trunk, looking out from behind it, Anselmo put his hand on his elbow and pointed with one finger.
    In the sentry box that faced toward them up the road, the sentry was sitting holding his rifle, the bayonet fixed, between his knees. He was smoking a cigarette and he wore a knitted cap and blanket style cape. At fifty yards, you could not see anything