“Good! If we’re crossing the snow fields already, we’ll surely be in Scutari by to-night,” I said. But I was joyful too soon, for when we reached the first of the snow the party stopped. The byraktor sat down on a rock and lighted a cigarette; the gendarme, without a word, began to climb a tall cliff that overhung the trail. What did it mean? Rexh did not know, and I sat impatiently on the mule, which began nosing through the snow for some bite to eat.
Then overhead the high, keen telephone call rang out, answered by far, thin voices that sounded as though the crystal air itself had been tapped, far away, by a giant finger. Even while the voices called and answered in the sky, silent men began to appear, suddenly, without my having noticed their approach. It was startling to see a strange, turbaned head beside my elbow, to find that between two glances a dignified, half-naked man was sitting on the rock beside the byraktor.
Rexh came and led the mule to a little distance. The figure of the gendarme, against the sky, raised its rifle, and I put my hands over my ears just in time to dull the echo crash. “It is polite to go away for a little distance, Mrs. Lane,” said Rexh. “The byraktor has called a council of all chiefs of Shoshi.”
In half an hour twenty men surrounded the byraktor. They were all, like the byraktor and his gendarme, in cotton underdrawers, barefooted, and naked above the waist, many of them wearing on their heads only the tiny round white cap that covered their scalplocks. Each of them carried his rifle on a woven strap slung over his shoulder, and all had an arsenal in their sashes. They sat on small rocks, on the snow-filmed ground, in a group about the byraktor’s bowlder.
We were at the mouth of the highest pass. All around the little open space towered cliffs heavy with snow, only to the east the mountain ranges fell away, one beyond the other, to the just-suggested chasm of the Lumi Shala Valley, and beyond it they rose again, purple and blue and gray, to the foot of the great wave of snow that touched the sky—the wave that Alex and Frances and Perolli were climbing, if they had left Shala. A black cloud hanging over the pass they were to take told that they were traveling in a storm.
The council lasted half an hour, three quarters of an hour, an hour. It concerned grave matters; the earnestness of those intent bodies and keen faces said that. Meantime Rexh and I talked in low tones.
“I am not paying the byraktor a hundred kronen to sit here while he holds a council,” said I. “Do you think he intends to get me to Scutari to-night?”
“I do not think so, Mrs. Lane. But if you want to get there, it shall be done. We must consider many things.” Rexh used his fingers to check them off. “First, the byraktor must be thinking a great deal about the new Tirana government. You remember that he asked the Shala man about Rrok Perolli. Also he talked a long time with his mother’s mother, and that was about politics. Second, the byraktor holds a council. Therefore he is going to do something that concerns the tribe. The byraktor, you know, is the war chief; he is the one who leads the tribe to war. Shoshi is in blood with Shala, and Shala has sworn a besa with the Tirana government. We must think of all these things. Now I think that the byraktor is also in blood with some of the tribes along the Kiri River, between here and Scutari. I think that he has hired you the mule so that he can travel in safety with you through those tribes and get to Scutari, where he will inquire about the Tirana government and whether it intends to join Shala in war against Shoshi. That is what I think.”
I looked at that twelve-year-old lad in amazement and admiration. “Well, Rexh,” I said, humbly, “I must leave it to you to get me to Scutari to-night, somehow. You think the byraktor intends to stop along the way?”
“Yes, Mrs. Lane. Also I think that the Shala man does not want to reach Scutari to-night. He swears earnestly, but I think he is a serpent with a forked tongue.”