Chapter 101: The Family Map

Boise was a city and I had never been in one.

I had been to Walla Walla and Walla Walla was a town. Boise had a capitol building with a dome and streets that went on for miles and a river and a depot and more cars in one hour than I had seen in my whole life in the Palouse.

The Council of Alphas met in a building on the north side of the city. It was stone and it had a brass door and a hall that went up three floors and there were wolves in gray coats in every corridor and not one of them looked at us.

Ada Kessler was carried up the steps in a chair by two of the Kessler wolves and she did not say a word and she did not take her eyes off the door.

We put the crates in a room off the hall and Silas stood in front of them with his folder and his face gray and did not leave them.

And then Arthur Renn came and took me by the arm.

“Beta,” he said. “There is a thing I have to show you before the Council sits.”

He took me into a small room with a table and a lamp and a map on the wall.

It was a map of the whole territory. Not just the Palouse. The whole of it. Eleven packs and the land between them and the rivers and the mountains and the roads, and there were lines drawn on it in red and blue and there were names written in small neat letters in the corners.

“This is the Council’s map,” Arthur Renn said. “It has been in the archive since 1902. It is the map the Council uses to keep track of the packs and the land and the claims.” He put his finger on a place at the top of the map. “That is the Palouse Ridge pack. That is your territory.”

I looked at it.

“And this,” he said, and put his finger on a place to the east, “is the Kessler pack. And this is the Walla Walla pack. And this is the Boise pack.”

I looked at the map.

“There is a pack here,” I said. “Between the Kessler pack and the Walla Walla pack. There is a name here and I do not know it.”

Arthur Renn looked at the name.

“It is the Riverside pack,” he said. “It is small. It has forty wolves and a territory of six thousand acres and it has been in the Council’s register since 1902.” He looked at me. “And there is a thing about the Riverside pack that nobody in Boise has ever looked at. Look at the name of the Alpha.”

I looked at the name.

It was Ruth.

“Ruth,” I said. “The Alpha of the Riverside pack is named Ruth.”

“The Alpha of the Riverside pack is named Ruth and she has been the Alpha for thirty years and her mother was Ruth and her grandmother was Ruth.” Arthur Renn put his hand on the map. “Beta, there is a fourth Ruth. There is a Ruth in the Riverside pack and she is the daughter of the third Ruth and she is the one who was born in Walla Walla in 1894 and was taken east and given to a family in Idaho.”

I sat down in the chair.

“The fourth daughter,” I said.

“The fourth daughter,” Arthur Renn said. “The one who was supposed to have died in 1896. She did not die. She was taken east and given to a family in Idaho and her name was Ruth and her daughter was Ruth and her daughter is the Alpha of the Riverside pack.” He looked at me. “There are four Ruths and there is a fifth. The Luna had four daughters and every one of them was named Ruth and every one of them had a daughter named Ruth and the line is not three and it is not five. It is a pack.”

I sat in the chair and looked at the map.

“The Riverside pack,” I said. “How many wolves?”

“Forty,” Arthur Renn said.

“And they are the Luna’s line.”

“They are the Luna’s line. They have been the Luna’s line since 1894 and they do not know it. They think they are a small pack in the mountains with a name that came from a grandmother.”

I stood up.

“Then we go to the Riverside pack,” I said.

“There is no time,” Arthur Renn said. “The Council sits in two hours.”

“Then we send a rider.” I looked at the map. “We send a rider to the Riverside pack and we tell the Alpha that the Luna is in Boise and that the Council is sitting and that she is needed.”

Arthur Renn looked at me.

“It is four hours to the Riverside pack,” he said. “The Council will have ruled before the rider gets there.”

“Then the rider does not go to the Riverside pack,” I said. “The rider goes to the telegraph office and sends a wire.” I put my hand on the map. “And we send a second wire to the Kessler pack and a third to the Palouse and a fourth to the Walla Walla pack and a fifth to Hannah’s aunt. We tell every pack that is the Luna’s line that the Council is sitting and that the Luna is in Boise and that they are needed.”

Arthur Renn was quiet.

“There are five packs,” he said. “The Palouse and the Kessler and the Walla Walla and the Riverside and the Boise.”

“There are five packs and there are five Lunas and there are four hundred and six names in the crates.” I looked at him. “And the Council of Alphas is going to sit in two hours and the first thing on the list is the removal of the seven Alphas who sat on the tribunal and the second thing is my arrest.” I put my hand on the map. “So we are going to fill that chamber with the Luna’s line and we are going to do it before the Council sits.”

Arthur Renn looked at the map.

“I will send the wires,” he said.

He went out.

I stood in the small room with the map.

And then the door opened and Silas came in.

“Beta,” he said. “There is a wolf in the hall who says he is the Alpha of the Riverside pack and that he has come to see the Luna.”

I turned around.

“He is here,” I said. “He is here already.”

“He is here,” Silas said. “And he has brought forty wolves with him and they are standing in the hall and they are not in Council coats and they are not in gray and they have come down out of the mountains on foot.”

I went out into the hall.

There were forty wolves in the hall and they were in canvas and wool and boots and they had come down out of the mountains on foot.

And at the front of them there was a woman.

She was old and she was small and she had white hair and dark eyes and a face that I had seen in a photograph in a box in a house in Walla Walla.

“I am Ruth,” she said. “I am the Alpha of the Riverside pack and I have been waiting for this wire since 1954.”

I looked at her.

“You knew,” I said.

“I knew,” Ruth said. “My mother told me when I was a girl. She told me the Luna’s line was scattered and that one day the Council would call and that we would have to come.” She put her hand on my arm. “And I have been waiting for the call for thirty years.”

The hall was quiet.

And then a bell rang somewhere in the building and a door opened at the end of the hall and a wolf in a gray coat came out and said, “The Council of Alphas is sitting.”

I looked at Ruth and at Silas and at Ada Kessler in her chair and at the crates and the stones and the photograph in my jacket.

“Then we go in,” I said.