Chapter 4: The Beta's Order

The pack house porch was full by seven, and half the pack was standing in the yard because there were not enough chairs.

I got there early and took a place by the rail with June on one side of me and Harlan's old dog on the other, and I watched everyone come in. The Corrigan brothers came together, as they always did, and old Mrs. Pike came with a pie she had made for the meeting and then set down on the step where anyone could take a slice, and the young border-wardens came in a clump with their hair still wet from washing. It could have been any meeting from any year of my life. The same porch, the same faces, the same smell of coffee and cut grass.

Dale came out last, with the hunters.

There were two of them, a man and a woman, and they did not look like hunters. The man was thick through the shoulders with a gray beard and a canvas jacket, and the woman was younger and had her hair in a braid down her back and a rifle case over her shoulder that she did not put down when she sat. They both had the flat, patient look of people who spend a lot of time waiting in cars.

Dale stood on the steps and raised his hand, and the yard went quiet.

“Thank you all for coming out on short notice,” he said. “I know the harvest is on and everyone is tired. I will keep this short. You all know about the calves. You know about the fences. Two weeks ago it was the Henderson place, last week it was the corral at the north line, and now it is Harold’s yard, which is a half mile from the co-op where half of you work. It is getting closer.”

A few people nodded. Mrs. Pike said something to the woman next to her.

“Harlan has been patient,” Dale said. “He has been patient with the Council, and with the pack law, and with the fact that we do not have a proper hunt until the Council gives us leave. But I am the Beta of this pack, and I am not going to wait for a piece of paper from a Council that does not live here while a rogue walks our border. So. This is Mr. Hask and Mrs. Bell. They are licensed out of Spokane and they have done this work for eleven packs in three states. They will be on our land tomorrow at first light.”

The woman, Mrs. Bell, nodded once. Mr. Hask did not move at all.

“And what happens when they find it?” someone called from the back. It was one of the Corrigan boys, and he sounded younger than he was. “What happens to the wolf?”

“It is culled,” Dale said. “That is the law for a rogue. It is a mercy, and it is a law, and it is how we keep our territory.”

I put my hand on the rail. The rail was warm from the sun.

“Beta,” I said.

Dale found me in the crowd, and his smile came up the way it always did, easy and warm, like he was glad to see me. “Wren. Our sharpest nose. Go ahead.”

“The calf at Harold’s was cut with a blade,” I said. “I told you that. Four long cuts and nothing eaten. A rogue wolf does not do that. If your hunters go out tomorrow and find a wolf, they are going to shoot a wolf that did not do this, and then the calves will keep dying and we will have a dead wolf and no answers.”

The yard was quiet. Mrs. Bell looked at me with a little more interest than she had before.

“You are a border-warden,” Dale said. “You are not a vet and you are not a tracker with a license. What you saw was a calf that had been lying in a field for a while, and fields do things to a body.”

“I know what a blade cut looks like.”

“Do you?” Dale said. His voice stayed warm. “Because from where I am standing, what I know is this. I have a pack to keep safe, and a Council that is already looking at us sideways, and a rogue on my border. And I have a border-warden who keeps finding the bodies before anyone else does and keeps telling me it is not a wolf.”

The yard went very still. Mrs. Pike put down her fork.

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“I am saying that if you have evidence, bring it to me,” Dale said. “In private. Not in front of the pack, not at a meeting, and not with your sister standing behind you making a face. Bring it to me, and I will look at it. But until then, the hunt goes ahead.”

June made a sound behind me. I put my hand back and found her wrist and held it.

“That is enough,” Harlan said. He had come out onto the porch and he stood next to Dale with his hat in his hands and his gray beard looking grayer than it had that morning. “Dale is right about the hunt. The Council has been asking questions about the north line. We cannot have this dragging on.” He looked at me and something in his face was sorry. “The hunters go out at first light. Wren, you will take them along the north fence and show them the tracks.”

“Yes, Alpha,” I said.

The meeting broke up. People took pie and talked in low voices and went home, and I stood by the rail with June and watched them go.

“He called you out in front of everyone,” June said.

“He did.”

“He as good as called you a liar.”

“He did that too.”

June was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I do not like him.”

“You liked him plenty last Christmas when he brought you a box of oranges.”

“That was before he called my sister a liar in front of Mrs. Pike.” She pulled her wrist out of my hand. “What are you going to do?”

“Show the hunters the north fence,” I said. “And hope they are better at their jobs than they look.”

I went down the steps and around the side of the house to cut through the orchard to the road, and I had made it to the first apple tree when a voice behind me said, “Miss Wren.”

I turned. It was Silas, in his gray suit, with his leather folder under his arm and his pale eyes catching what was left of the light. He had come around the house without a sound. I was not sure how.

“Mr. Silas.”

“Just Silas,” he said. “I do not have a surname that anyone here would find interesting. I wanted to catch you before you went home. I have been watching you all evening.”

“That is a strange thing to say to a woman in an orchard.”

He smiled. It was a small, neat smile, and it did not reach his eyes. “I mean that I have been watching the meeting. You are the only person in that yard who is asking questions about the calf instead of the wolf. That interests me. It interests the Council very much.”

“The Council sent you to buy grain land.”

“The Council sent me to buy grain land,” Silas agreed. “And while I am here, the Council would also like to know how a rogue came to be on the north line, and why the pack did not report the first dead calf until two weeks ago, and why the person who keeps finding the bodies is a border-warden who has been passed over for promotion twice.” He tipped his head. “These are the questions the Council likes to ask. I am only the one who carries them around.”

“I was not passed over,” I said. “I did not apply.”

“Exactly,” said Silas.

The orchard was dark under the trees and I could hear the dog barking somewhere by the house. Silas opened his folder and took out a photograph, and held it out to me.

I took it. It was a picture of a field, taken from a distance, with a line of trees at the top and a low stone wall running along the bottom, and there was a dark shape in the middle of the field. A wolf. It was not a good photograph and the wolf was only a smear, but it was a wolf.

“That was taken three weeks ago,” Silas said, “by a farmer with a new camera and more time than sense. He sold it to the Council for eleven dollars. Do you know where that field is?”

I looked at the stone wall and the trees. “It is the field behind the old mill.”

“Yes,” Silas said. “The old mill, on the north line, where the land records say there is a boundary stone that nobody has been able to find for forty years.” He held out his hand for the photograph. “The Council is not only interested in grain, Miss Wren. It is interested in that mill. And so, I think, is your rogue.”

I gave him back the photograph. My fingers were steady. “There is no rogue,” I said. “There is a wolf, and there is a dead calf with a blade in it, and there is a Beta who wants the whole thing over with before anyone looks too close.”

Silas put the photograph back in his folder. “Yes,” he said. “That is exactly what I have been thinking.” He turned and walked back toward the house, and then stopped and turned again. “One more thing. The Council has a long memory, and it does not care for border-wardens who hide things. If you know something about the north line, I would bring it to me before you bring it to anyone else. I am much more reasonable than I look.”

He went around the corner of the house, and I stood in the orchard with the apples going dark on the trees and my heart going hard.

I did not go home. I went to the co-op, and the side door was locked, and I stood in the yard and looked at the loading dock and the empty cot through the window and the peg where Owen’s coat had hung.

Then I turned around and walked north along the fence line with no lamp and no moon, and I opened my senses all the way, and the scent came to me before I had gone a quarter mile.

It was stronger than before. Pine and cedar and warm skin, and it was coming from the direction of the old mill, and it was moving toward me.