I looked at the ring of utterly savage-looking men, half naked, with shaven heads and scalplocks, surrounding me in those wild mountains, and suddenly I struggled not to laugh. If a magic vision could have shown me then to my friends at home, how they would have prayed that I escape alive, while the real difficulty was that these savages wanted only too embarrassingly to protect me.
“But, Rexh, it is absurd. I did not ask for his protection; I simply hired his mule. Tell him that he has brought me so far safely, so far I have traveled under his protection. I thank him, I thank him deeply, I am most grateful with my whole heart, but now I will leave his protection and travel onward.” And to Rexh’s words, with my hand on my heart, I added in Albanian, “I thank you from my heart.”
The byraktor made a gesture, only a little gesture with his hand, but the violence of its fury I cannot describe. “You thank me! You have broken my honor!” he said, and even without Rexh’s murmured translation I would have felt the menace of the silence that followed.
“But,” I said, bewildered, “I am traveling with the Shala man. Isn’t the Shala man protection? Besides, tell him I don’t need protection. I am protected even here by the power of my own tribe.”
“The Shala man shall take you in, Mrs. Lane,” said Rexh. That too-handsome youth had hung back from the conversation, but Rexh’s stern eye brought him into it. And then there was such a battle of words that the very rocks joined it. The byraktor stood listening, bending down a little, intent; Rexh—short, pudgy Rexh in his flannelette pajamas—drove home with fist on chubby fist his earnest words, and the Shala man called Heaven and the cliffs to witness his clamor. The byraktor turned his eyes from Rexh to the Shala man, from the Shala man to Rexh, and thoughtfully stroked his chin. Around us the other men stood attentive.
Then the Shala man turned and, lifting me from the trail to which I had dismounted, swung me again into the saddle. He pounded the saddle with his fist and exclaimed violently, his face congested with dark blood.
“It is all right, Mrs. Lane,” said Rexh, grimly. “He will take you in. He has told the byraktor why he cannot take you to Scutari; it is because the gendarmes are looking for him to kill him. But he will take you in. After that the gendarmes can have him; he is of no use.”
Even my fixed idea was shaken by those astounding, calm words.
“But, Rexh,” I said, in horror, “I can’t kill a man, even to get to Scutari to-night. Do you think the gendarmes will really kill him if he takes me in?” But one glance at the violently miserable Shala man answered the question.
“Yes, Mrs. Lane,” said Rexh. “They will kill him by law, because he has killed some men. But, Mrs. Lane, he said he would take you to Scutari and he must take you to Scutari. The byraktor will tell you so.”