“Oh, do you think we can? Ask the Shala man if he knows where there is one.”
The Shala man, to my joy—but Rexh looked doubtful—said at once that there was one at the next house. So we went into it, and sat for some time by the fire, and were given coffee, our steaming clothes making the place like a Turkish bath. But there was no mule; the Shala man said we would find one at the next house. The houses were perhaps a quarter of a mile apart here, scattered along the mountain sides above the Lumi Shala, and the Shala man stopped at every one of them. There would be a delirium of struggling up slopes so steep that I could go, as it were, on all fours, without having to admit that my knees were limp, and then of staggering downward, and then an interval of smoke and fire and thick, sweet coffee, and then out into the water again. At last I began really to protest.
“I won’t go into this house,” I said, flatly. “We ought to make forty miles at least before we stop, if we’re to get to Scutari in three days. We have to keep going all the time. I’m not going to stop in any more houses.”
“Mrs. Lane, we have to,” said Rexh.
“But why? It’s nonsense! This man’s saying always that the mule is at the next house. These people know whether there’s a mule in the village or not. We needn’t stop in every house.”
“Yes, we do, Mrs. Lane. We are in Shoshi and this man will be killed if he does not take care. You do not look like a woman, Mrs. Lane. You look like a Montenegrin man, in those pants and that long gray coat. He has to stop in every house, so that the people will see he is traveling with a woman.”
“But, Rexh, I thought we were going through Pultit.”
“This is Shoshi, Mrs. Lane.”
The Shala man, tall and young and very conscious that he was handsome, stood easily on the slope beside us, rain running over him as though he were a stone in a stream, his rifle held carefully protected from the wet by a fold of the poncho. He seemed entirely happy.
“What do you mean,” said I, furiously “by bringing me through Shoshi when you agreed to take me through Pultit?” And when Rexh, like a small image of an accusing judge, had translated, the Shala man looked like an artless child surprised in innocent mischief.