Somehow I don't see Naruto being killed by some dumbass backcountry dudes. The name of the next episode doesn't do much in the way of building excitement with these settings. After all, their best ninja soldiers weren't even able to deal with some lowly scribe, or whatever the nobody with glasses was. Even if Naruto let himself be detained because he didn't want to fight the guards, I doubt he lets them carry on with the execution, and I don't really see they could do anything to stop Naruto without real ninjas of their own.

It seems to me like Kakashi intends to reveal what's really going on by observing for a while.

Actually I think this arc is looking quite tolerable. Probably the best of these fillers so far. The frogs had the worst lines ever (maybe they ran out of adult script writing monkeys), but if you forget them, it's not entirely bad at all.