Chapter 11: The Pack Meeting

I walked home under the trees with the wolf beside me until the trees ran out, and then I stopped at the edge of the east field and crouched down and put my hand on his head.

“You have to stay here,” I said. “You cannot come into town like this. If anyone sees you, Mrs. Bell will not be the only one with a rifle.”

The wolf looked at me. Then he turned and went back into the trees, and I watched until the pale fur was gone.

I got to the house at ten minutes past four in the morning and June was sitting at the kitchen table in her nightgown with the lamp on and her hands wrapped around a cup.

“You are late,” she said. “You are very late.”

“I know.”

“Did it happen?”

“It happened.” I sat down across from her. “June, I need you to listen to me and not ask me questions until I am finished.”

She listened. I told her about the field and the wolf and the stone marker and Mrs. Bell’s rifle and Silas standing on the other side of the wall with his folder. I did not tell her about the moment the wolf put its nose in my palm. I did not tell her about the heat. There are some things a woman keeps to herself even from her sister, and that one had gotten too big to say out loud.

When I was finished, June was quiet for a while.

“So the Council man knows,” she said.

“He knows enough.”

“And he wants to talk to you before the meeting.”

“He does.”

“Then you should talk to him.” June got up and poured me a cup of the coffee that had been sitting on the stove going bitter. “If Silas knows, and Silas is Council, then Silas can stop Dale. He is the only person in this county who can.”

“Silas is Council,” I said. “That is the problem, not the answer. The Council wants the stone, and the Council wants the land, and the Council has the founders’ record in a drawer in Boise that nobody has been allowed to read in eighty-five years. I am not going to hand him the one thing that could break a curse and hope he is on my side.”

June sat down again.

“Then what are you going to do at the meeting?”

“I do not know yet.”

The meeting was set for seven in the pack house yard. I got there at twenty to, and there were already forty people on the porch and in the yard and along the fence. It was the biggest meeting I had seen since the night they buried my brother.

Dale was on the steps with his hair combed back and a clean shirt on. Harlan was beside him with his hat in his hands and his face grayer than it had been a week ago. Silas was at the back of the porch with his folder under his arm and his pale eyes going over the crowd, and when he found me he did not smile and he did not look away.

I took my place by the rail. June stood next to me. Maeve was on the other side of the yard with her shawl around her shoulders and her chin up.

“Thank you all for coming,” Dale said. “I will be brief. The hunters have walked the line every night for a week. They have found tracks, they have found a place where the wire was cut and rehung, and last night they found something else.” He paused. “They found a wolf in the east field. They did not take it, because there was no Council order for a cull and the hunter on the scene did not have the standing. But they saw it, and they saw who was standing with it.”

The yard went quiet. I could feel people looking at me.

“Wren,” Dale said. “Come up here.”

I walked up the steps. I did not hurry. I stood beside Harlan and looked out at the pack, at the Corrigan boys and old Mrs. Pike and the young border-wardens and Harold from the co-op, and I put my hands in my pockets and found the stone there, warm through the handkerchief.

“Tell the pack what you were doing in the east field last night,” Dale said.

“I was walking the line,” I said.

“The east field is not on your line. Your line is the north fence.”

“The east field is on the north fence. The wall is the boundary.”

“There is no boundary at the wall,” Dale said. “The boundary is six miles east, and it has been six miles east since 1891, and it is in the Council records, and I have seen the map.” He turned to the pack. “Wren was in the east field at night, alone, with a wolf that the hunters have been tracking for a month. She was seen standing in the wheat with her hand on it. She was seen speaking to it.”

A murmur went through the yard.

“Is it true?” Mrs. Pike called out. “Wren, is that true?”

“It is true that I was in the field,” I said. “It is true that there was a wolf. It is not true that I was doing anything wrong.”

“Then tell us what you were doing,” Dale said.

“I was trying to keep it from being killed.”

The murmur got louder. Dale raised his hand and it went quiet again.

“You were trying to keep a rogue from being killed,” he said. “A rogue that has been killing calves on this territory for two months. A rogue that has cut fences and torn up the north corral. A rogue that every wolf in this pack has been afraid of since July. And you, a Gamma of this pack, a border-warden, were standing in the dark with your hand on its head, and you did not call for help, and you did not tell your Beta.” He turned to the yard. “I have known Wren since we were children. I do not want to believe what I am about to say. But I am the Beta of this pack, and I have to ask her, in front of all of you, because the law says I must ask it in front of all of you.” He looked at me. “Wren. Name the rogue. Give us the man you have been hiding. Give us his name and his face and where he sleeps, and we will take him quietly, and this pack will be safe, and you will be forgiven for whatever hold he has on you.”

The yard was silent. Somebody’s baby started to cry and was hushed.

“I do not know his name,” I said.

It was a lie and it sat in my mouth like a stone.

“You do not know his name,” Dale said slowly. “You were standing with your hand on his head in the east field, and you do not know his name.”

“I know he is not what you think he is.”

“Then what is he?”

I looked out at the pack. I looked at Harlan, who would not meet my eyes. I looked at Maeve, who was watching me with her chin up and her mouth tight and her whole body braced as if she was waiting for a door to open. I looked at June, who was white to the lips and standing very straight.

“He is a wolf who has been cursed,” I said. “He changes on the new moon instead of the full, and he does not choose where he goes, and the things that have been done in this county on the new moon have been done with him, not by him. There is a stone in the east field that the founders buried, and the Council has been looking for it for eighty-five years, and the harvest order in July was not about grain. It was about getting the field cut so the stone could be found before anyone asked why.”

Nobody spoke. Dale’s face had gone very still.

“That is a remarkable story,” he said. “And it is convenient, and it is the story of a woman who has spent two months finding bodies and telling her Beta that he is wrong. There is no stone in the east field. There is no curse. There is a rogue, and there is a border-warden who has been protecting it, and I am going to ask you one more time, in front of this pack and the Council, to name him.”

“I will not.”

“Then I am going to name you,” Dale said. His voice was quiet and sad and it carried to the back of the yard. “I am going to name you a traitor to the Palouse Ridge pack, and I am going to ask Harlan to strip you of your rank, and I am going to ask the Council to hold you until the rogue is taken.”

The yard broke into noise. People were standing up. Mrs. Pike had her hand over her mouth. The Corrigan boys were talking at once.

And then Harlan took his hat off his head and held it up.

“Enough,” he said. His voice was not loud, but it was the voice of an Alpha and the yard went quiet. “Dale, put your hand down. Wren stays where she is.” He turned and looked at Dale, and his face was gray and tired and there was something hard in it that I had not seen in years. “There is a stone in the east field. I have seen the survey map from 1891, and the wall is not on it, and I have wondered about that wall for thirty years. If there is a Council record that says otherwise, then the Council has been lying to us for longer than any of us has been alive. We are not going to strip a Gamma and hand her to the Council on the word of a hunter and a bad map. We are going to look at the field.”

Dale’s mouth opened and then closed.

“Alpha,” he said, “the Council…”

“The Council can come and look with us,” Harlan said. “Tomorrow morning. Bring the hunters, bring the map, and bring the survey stakes. If there is no stone, I will strip Wren myself and hand her over. If there is, we will have a very different conversation.” He put his hat back on. “Meeting is over.”

The yard emptied slowly. People went past me and did not say anything, and some of them looked at me and some of them looked at the ground. Dale stood on the steps for a long moment and then walked off toward the barn without looking back.

June came up and took my arm.

“He is going to do something,” she said. “Wren, he is going to do something before morning.”

“I know.”

“What are we going to do?”

I looked across the yard. Silas was standing by the porch rail with his folder closed and his pale eyes on me, and when I looked at him he tipped his head very slightly toward the road.

“I am going to talk to the Council man,” I said. “And then I am going to the field.”