Chapter 58: The Council's Offer

We went into the barn and shut the door and Silas put his folder on a bale of hay and opened it.

"The wire came into the depot at Walla Walla at four this morning," he said. "It was addressed to me as the investigator of this territory. It says the Council has reviewed the situation and is prepared to make a settlement." He took out the paper. "The terms are these. The wolf known as Elias is to be surrendered to the Council's hand at the bridge on the river road by noon tomorrow. The mill land and the east field are to be signed over to the Council for administration. In exchange, the Council will withdraw the treason warrant, the cull order, and the trial claim, and will confirm the Palouse Ridge pack in its territory and its Alpha in his rank."

"And me?" I said.

"You are named in it." Silas put the paper down. "It says the Gamma Wren Halloran will be permitted to remain in the territory and to retain her rank, and that the matter of her brother's death will be closed and no further action taken."

I sat down on a bale.

"Closed," I said.

"Closed."

"With Dale a free man and the Council free of blame and my brother in a closed casket and the whole thing forgotten."

"That is the offer," Silas said. "And there is a second wire, addressed to me personally and not to the investigator. It is from the chief clerk. It says that if I bring you in and the wolf is surrendered and the land is signed, I will be made chief of the Council's western district and given a seat on the Council of Alphas within five years." He looked at me. "It says I have been a good servant of the Council for nineteen years and it says the Council does not forget its friends."

I looked at him.

"Nineteen years," I said.

"Nineteen years." Silas closed the folder. "I have been carrying that folder for nineteen years. I have investigated forty-three packs. I have signed four hundred and six trial claims. I have bought grain land in eleven territories and I have watched the Council take Lunas and land and I have never once said a word." He put his hand flat on the folder. "And then I came to this territory and I found a woman who would not lie down."

I looked at him for a long moment.

"Silas," I said. "There is a thing I have been meaning to ask you since the first night in the trailer. The Council wants the mill land. The Council has wanted it since 1954. Why? What is under the mill land that is worth eighty-five years of paper and murder?"

Silas was quiet.

"Tell me," I said.

He opened the folder and took out a map.

It was a Council map of the territory, old, with the boundary drawn in red ink and the east field and the mill and the stone wall marked on it. And under the mill, in the space where the tunnel should have been, there was a word written in a hand I had seen on the founders' record.

It said: vault.

"The Council has a vault under the mill," Silas said. "It has been there since 1954. It was built in the cellar under the grain chute, and it holds every trial claim the Council has ever collected, every deed it has ever forged, and every piece of paper it has ever wanted to keep from the Alphas." He put his finger on the map. "The vault is the reason the Council wants the land. Not the stone and not the wheat. The vault. If the Alphas ever got into that vault they would have eighty-five years of evidence against the Council in one room."

I looked at the map.

"The tunnel," I said. "The tunnel from the circle to the pack house. Wren and I found it in the mill. It went down."

"It goes down to the vault," Silas said. "I have been in it. I went in on Tuesday night before the hunters came and I saw the door and I did not have the key." He looked at me. "But I know where the key is. It is in the chief clerk's desk in Boise, and it is the only key, and there is a record of it in the archive."

I stood up.

"Then we do not need to go to Boise," I said. "We go back to the mill. We go down the tunnel and we open the vault and we take everything out of it and we put it in front of the Alphas and the whole Council falls in one afternoon."

Silas did not move.

"It is not that simple," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because the vault door has a lock that takes two keys. One is in Boise and one is here." He looked at me. "The second key is in the tack room of the pack house in a box behind a board, and Rourke has the pack house, and Rourke has the box."

I sat down again.

"Then we take the pack house back," I said.

"With what?" Silas said. "Rourke has twelve men and the hunters' truck and half the pack is standing with him out of fear. We have five wolves and a sick truck and a cursed wolf with a stitched shoulder."

"We have the truth," I said.

"The truth is not a weapon."

"That is what Dale said."

"Dale is right," Silas said. "The truth is not a weapon until it is in front of the Alphas. Until then it is a story that two people tell in a barn." He put the map away. "But there is a thing the Council does not know. The Council does not know that I have turned. The Council thinks I am still its investigator and it thinks I am bringing you in." He looked at me. "So I am going to go back to the pack house and I am going to tell Rourke that I have found you and that I am bringing you in at the bridge at noon tomorrow. And while Rourke is at the bridge waiting for me, you will be at the mill going down the tunnel."

"And the second key?"

"The second key is in the tack room in a box behind a board." Silas looked at me. "And I am going to walk into that pack house with a Council wire in my hand and a story about a wolf in a barn, and I am going to get that key."

I looked at him.

"Silas," I said. "If Rourke finds out you are lying, he will not arrest you. He will kill you and he will file a report that says you resisted."

"I know," Silas said.

"And you are going to do it anyway."

"I am going to do it anyway." He picked up his folder and put it under his arm. "I have been the Council's man for nineteen years and I have signed four hundred and six trial claims and I have never once put my own name on the line. I am going to put it on the line now." He looked at me. "Warden. There is a thing I have to tell you before I go. It is about the trial claims. The four hundred and six."

"What about them?"

"Forty of them are forgeries," Silas said. "Arthur Renn's grandfather forged the first ones and the Council kept the practice up, and when I came to the Council in 1960 they taught me how to do it. I have forged trial claims for nineteen years. I have taken land from Lunas who never signed a paper and never knew a claim had been filed." He put his hand on the barn door. "That is the thing I am going to answer for when this is over. Not the wolves I have arrested and not the land I have bought. The forgeries. I am the man who wrote the false claims and I am going to stand in front of the Alphas and tell them so."

I looked at him for a long moment.

"Then we will stand in front of them together," I said. "You and me and Dale and Erik Renn and the whole of it."

Silas nodded once.

"At noon tomorrow," he said. "Be at the mill. Go down the tunnel. I will meet you at the vault door with the key."

He went out and got in his car and drove off down the road, and I stood in the barn door and watched him go.

Elias came down the ladder with his coat over his shoulder.

"You trust him," he said.

"I do not know if I trust him." I turned around. "But I know he is the only man in this county who can get into that pack house and come out with the key. And I know he has been carrying that folder for nineteen years and he is tired of it."

Elias looked at the road where the car had gone.

"Then we go to the mill," he said.

"We go to the mill."

And then June came running around the corner of the barn with her face white.

"Wren," she said. "There is a wire on the mailbox. It came while we were in the barn. It is addressed to the Alpha of the Palouse Ridge pack and it says the Council of Alphas has received the petition." She held it out. "It says the Alphas are coming. It says they will hold the hearing in this territory on the twenty-ninth of September."

I took the wire.

The twenty-ninth was four days away.