“Well, you know what it is. It is up to you,” said she. (How I love women for the way they love you and yet leave you free!) “Only, if you did have a fever, you realize it would be dangerous to try to make it, in this weather.”
“If I had a fever, it strikes me it would be equally dangerous to stay here,” I replied. “And I must be in Paris, on the job, by the twentieth.”
“Well, if it’s the job——” said she, and called Perolli.
Perolli was deep in politics, and paused only a moment to say that if he had any authority over me he would not listen for a moment to such a mad notion; but I told him he hadn’t and asked him to get me a guide. He said he did not know the men here, but would do his best, and by the time I was dressed he brought the guide, a slim, too-handsome youth who spoke Italian and swore to get me to Scutari in two days.
Frances said that if I would insist on going, I must take Rexh with me; and I said I would not dream of it, I would not think of letting that twelve-year-old give up the trip into the farther mountains. All along the way he had thought of little else, and half his sentences had begun, “When we get into the Merdite country——” We argued about it, Frances patient and I surprised to find how bad tempered I could be. The packs must be rearranged, and I kept putting my hand down on things that were not there; everything moved with incredible slowness, and eternities passed before I cut short the interminable formalities of farewell and plunged out into the cool, delightful rain.
CHAPTER XIII
THE BACKWARD TRAIL—THE MAN OF SHALA HAS A SENSE OF HUMOR—THE BYRAKTOR OF SHOSHI HEARS THAT THE EARTH IS ROUND.
We started down the bed of a waterfall, the guide and I; the bad going, the exhausting force of the current, my dizziness and breath-taking pains, made the first half mile a blur. When we came out on a cliff edge I sat down, and then for the first time I saw Rexh. He stood very gravely, watching me; the rain had melted the dye in his red fez and little streams of it ran down his round, serious face.
“It is much better for me to come with you, Mrs. Lane,” he said. “You do not know the language, and this Shala man he is a bad man.”
“But, Rexh, my dear!” I said. “No, no! You must go back to Miss Hardy and say that I say you cannot come.” He might never again have an opportunity to see that farther interior country; it was a trip to dream of for years and to remember always afterward. I had not asked him to give it up; I did not want him to. I was safe enough; all the tribal laws protected me; no one had any motive for injuring me, and the Shala man, however bad, knew that I had no money and that he would be well paid when he delivered me in Scutari.