Chapter 24: Dale's Threat

Silas left for Boise at four in the morning.

I walked him to his car with the sky still dark and the stars out over the ridge, and he put his bag in the back seat and stood by the door with his hat in his hand.

"The hearing is on the twenty-ninth," he said. "I will be back before the new moon if I can. If I am not back, you go to the stones anyway. The stones will hold the curse and the wolf will change and come back, and that is better than the alternative." He looked at me. "And warden. If Dale comes to you before I return, do not lie to him. He is better at lying than you are and he will know."

"I will keep my face still."

"Keep your face still and keep your sister close." He put his hat on. "There is one more thing. The archivist in Boise is a man named Arthur Renn, and he is sixty-one years old, and he has been the archivist for thirty years. If Clara Renn's mother sent the Luna east and the Luna had a family, Arthur Renn may know where that family is. He may be the only person in Boise who knows. And if he is the man I think he is, he has been waiting for someone to ask."

He got in the car and drove off down the ridge road with his headlights on the trees.

I went back inside and Maeve had the kettle on and Elias was asleep in the chair by the stove with his head back and his mouth open, and I stood in the doorway and looked at him for a while.

I did not sleep that morning. I went to the co-op at seven and June was already there with the coffee on and the ledger open, and I told her what Silas had said and what Maeve had said and what we were going to do.

"Boise," June said. "You are going to Boise."

"Silas is going to Boise. I am going to stay here and hold the stones and keep Dale from marrying me until the claim hearing."

"And if Silas does not come back?"

"Then I go to the circle."

June looked at me for a long moment. Then she closed the ledger.

"I am going to Boise," she said.

"June."

"I am going to Boise," she said again. "I have been sitting in this co-op for two weeks keeping books while you walk the fence line and get hit over the head and hide a man in the back room. I am nineteen years old and I am not a child and I can drive a truck and I can read and I can talk to an archivist without saying the wrong thing." She put her hands on her hips. "And if Silas goes to Boise alone and something happens to him on the road, then nobody in this territory knows what he was going to say. But if I go with him, then there are two of us, and one of us can come back."

I opened my mouth and closed it again.

"You are going to say no," June said.

"I was going to say yes."

She blinked.

"You are?"

"You are right," I said. "I hate it when you are right. But you are right." I sat down on the desk. "Silas is leaving at four in the morning. He has already gone. You will have to catch him on the road or wait for him to come back through town, and I do not know which way he went."

June was already getting her coat.

"Harold has a truck," she said. "He will lend it to me if I tell him it is a family thing. And Wren." She stopped at the door. "If Dale comes to the house while I am gone, do not let him in. Do not let him in for anything."

"I will not let him in."

She went out.

I worked the co-op all morning with the ledger and the tickets and the telephone, and at eleven o'clock Dale came in.

He came in through the front door with his hat on and his hands in his pockets, and he stood in the office and looked around at the shelves and the desk and the back room door.

"Where is your sister?" he said.

"June has gone to Walla Walla to see our aunt."

"Your aunt is dead."

"Our other aunt."

Dale looked at me for a moment. Then he smiled and sat down in Harold's chair.

"I have been thinking," he said. "About the claim. I have been thinking that it might be a good thing for both of us. The Council has signed it and the Alpha has agreed to it and the hearing is in a month, and after the hearing you will be the Luna of this pack and I will be the Alpha when Harlan steps down, and the two of us will run this territory together." He leaned back. "It is not a bad life, Wren. You would have the pack house and the Council's ear and a husband who does not beat you and does not drink. You could keep walking the fence line if you wanted to. I would not stop you."

I put down the pencil.

"I do not want the pack house," I said. "And I do not want you."

"You have made that clear."

"Then why are you here?"

Dale's smile did not move, but something behind it shifted.

"Because there is a Council investigator in this territory who has been asking questions about your brother," he said. "Because there is a wolf in the mill who has been seen with you and who the hunters have not been able to find. And because the last time a Halloran crossed me, it did not go well for him." He stood up. "I am going to give you a piece of advice, Wren, and it is free. The Council does not care about your brother. The Council does not care about the stone or the curse or the old pack. The Council cares about the land and the grain and the taxes, and the Council has been getting its grain from this pack for eighty-five years, and it is not going to let a Gamma with a dead brother and a wolf in a mill change that." He put his hat on. "If you keep asking questions, the Council is going to decide you are a problem. And when the Council decides a wolf is a problem, the wolf disappears. There is a cull order with your name on it in a drawer in Boise, and all I have to do is ask for it."

I stood up too.

"Get out of my co-op," I said.

Dale smiled and went to the door. Then he stopped.

"You know what I have always wondered?" he said. "Why nobody ever asked how your brother got a wolf wound in his chest when there was not a wolf track within fifty feet of the body." He looked back at me. "I have wondered that for four months. The sheriff did not ask. The coroner did not ask. The Council did not ask. Nobody in this pack asked. And now a Council investigator is asking, and a Gamma is asking, and an old woman at the end of the mill road is asking, and it is all going to come out in a hearing, and when it does, the only person in this territory who will be left standing is the one who has been keeping the Council's grain coming." He opened the door. "Think about it, Wren. That is all I am asking. Think about which side of this you want to be on."

He went out and the door closed behind him.

I stood in the office with my hands on the desk and my heart going hard.

He had told me. He had stood in my office and told me exactly what he was going to do and exactly what he had done, and he had done it with a smile on his face because he was certain I could not stop him.

And he was right about one thing. Nobody had ever asked how my brother got a wolf wound in his chest when there was not a wolf track within fifty feet of the body. I had been a border-warden for four years and I had not asked. My mother had not asked. Harlan had not asked. The sheriff had written a report and the coroner had signed it and the pack had buried my brother in a closed casket and moved on.

Somebody had made that happen. Somebody had made a county full of wolves who could smell a lie at a hundred yards decide not to smell this one.

I picked up the telephone and called the pack house.

"Harlan," I said when he answered. "This is Wren. I need to see the sheriff's report on my brother's death. The original. Not the copy in the pack records. The one the sheriff signed."

There was a long silence on the line.

"Wren," Harlan said. "I do not think that is a good idea."

"I did not ask whether it was a good idea. I asked to see the report."

Another silence.

"It is not here," Harlan said. "It never was. The sheriff sent it to the Council and the Council filed it and the copy in the pack records is a copy of a copy. That is how it has always worked in this territory. When a wolf dies in a way that touches the Council, the paper goes to Boise."

I stood very still with the receiver against my ear.

"Then who in this territory has seen the original?" I said.

"Nobody," Harlan said. "Nobody except Dale, because Dale is the one who wrote to the Council about it." He paused. "Wren, I am sorry. I should have asked. I should have asked four months ago and I did not."

I put the receiver down.

Dale had written to the Council about my brother's death. Dale had written the letter that sent the paper to Boise. Dale had been the one who told the pack it was a rogue and the one who told the Council it was a rogue and the one who had a coat with a tear in it in a box in his barn.

I got my jacket and went out.

I found Elias at the edge of the trees behind the co-op, and he came out when he saw me and stopped when he saw my face.

"What happened?" he said.

"Dale was here." I told him what Dale had said and what Harlan had said, and when I was finished Elias was very quiet.

"Then there is no report," he said. "There is a letter from Dale and a copy of a copy and nothing else."

"There is a report," I said. "There is always a report. The sheriff signed it and the coroner signed it and it went to Boise, and if Silas is in Boise, then Silas can find it." I looked at him. "But Silas is on the road and June is going after him and I am here alone with a claim hearing in a month and a new moon in twelve days and a man who just told me he can make me disappear."

Elias reached out and took my hand.

"Then we do the thing we can do," he said. "We go to the mill and we look at the wall where the stone was buried and we see what the founders left behind. Clara Renn has been living at the end of that road for eleven years and she has never once been inside that mill. There may be something in it that nobody has found."

I looked at him. His hand was warm and his eyes were steady and the wind was coming up from the north.

"All right," I said. "The mill."

We walked up the mill road together, and the trees closed over us, and the mill stood at the end of the road with its tin roof and its broken door, and I did not know it then, but that was the last quiet hour we had.