Sandanski brought a letter from Miss Stone
“I asked Tsilka if she can travel, if the time had come for her to give birth. We had prepared everything two months in advance. We got cloth, and the womencheap bridesmaid dresses knit clothes and made dipers. Tsilka told me that she will give birth in one hour,” recounted the voivoda Yane Sandanski some time later.
On January 3, 1902, in the village of Serbinovo, Katerina Tsilka gave birth to a healthy girl whom she named Elena, after Miss Stone. The birth of the child was celebrated with a feast by the rebels.
Yet, Turkish troops arrived only three days later, and they had to flee again. Tsilka, however, could not ride on a horse, so the rebels carried her and the baby around in a chest.
“The rebels must have been quite a picture with their guns and diapers in their backpacks, carrying around the baby, running around the mountains,” one Bulgarian author sums up.
Tsilka herself had studied in the United States and took care of her newly born child according to Western medicine – her techniques made an impression on the voivoda Sandanski who remembered everything and is known to have used this knowledge years later.
The crying of the baby, however, increased the danger for the rebels. After all, Miss Stone and Tsilka were hostages. It is at this point that some of the rebels suggested that they should kill the hostages in order to avoid being caught.
The voivoda, however, was outraged at them, and prohibited any such course of action with the following words: “If we kill them, we kill ourselves, and our cause before the people. Actually, let us all die if we must, but let’s not hurt our cause.”
The band managed to hide in Vlahi, Sandanski’s home village, and the voivoda instructed Chernopeev and Asenov to finish the ransom talks any way they can because they “had all been fed up.”
At that point, House and Pete struck a deal with them for a ransom of 14 500 lira – or USD 63 800. This happened on the ninth day after the band had hidden in Vlahi.
On January 31, 1902, Sandanski and Asenov met with House in Bansko. House brought the money after he withdrew it from the account of the US State Department in the Ottoman Bank branch in Thessaloniki. He was accompanied by 250 Turkish soldiers.
Sandanski brought a letter from Miss Stone, explained black bridesmaid dressto House that the entire abduction was “for a good cause”, and demanded that the Turkish soldiers withdraw before the ransom is delivered.The Turkish officers refused. As a result, Sandanski and House fashioned a plan to trick them.
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