Chapter 59: Silas Shows His Hand

We waited at the barn until noon. Silas was to reach the pack house by ten and send word by the farmer's telephone, and the farmer came out at eleven and said there had been no call.

At noon there was a call.

It was not Silas. It was the Corrigan boy, and he was calling from the co-op and his voice was going up and down and he was talking too fast.

"Wren," he said. "You have to come. Silas is in the pack square and Rourke has him and he has called the whole pack in and he is going to make him say it in front of everybody."

"Say what?"

"I do not know. He has a box on the table and a paper in his hand and he is saying Silas is a traitor and Silas has been forging Council paper since 1960." The boy's voice cracked. "And Wren, Silas is not denying it. He is standing in the square with his hands tied and he is not denying a word of it."

I put the receiver down.

We took both trucks. Mrs. Bell drove hers and I drove Harold's, and we came down the co-op road at one o'clock with the snow in the fields and the sky gray and the pack square full of wolves.

They had put a table in the middle of the square. There was a box on it and a stack of papers and a lamp and a chair. Rourke was standing beside the table with his coat open and his hair combed and a paper in his hand, and Silas was standing in front of the table with his hands tied behind his back and his gray suit dusty and his face pale and steady.

And half the pack was standing there watching.

"Come in, Warden," Rourke said. "You are just in time. The investigator has been telling us a very interesting story."

I walked into the square with Elias beside me and Mrs. Bell behind us with her rifle and June and Hannah and Arthur Renn at the back with the stones in the truck. Dale got out of his truck and stood at the edge of the square and did not come in.

"Say it again," Rourke said to Silas. "Say it in front of the Gamma."

Silas turned his head and looked at me.

"I have been forging trial claims for the Council since 1960," he said. "I have forged four hundred and six of them. I have written the names of Lunas on paper they never signed and I have used those papers to take land from eleven packs in this territory and the territories around it. I have collected the Lunas' land and I have sent it to Boise and I have been paid for it every year." He looked at the pack. "I am not going to deny it. I am going to tell you how it was done."

The square was silent.

"The Council does not take land by force," Silas said. "It takes land by paper. A trial claim is filed in Boise and the Luna is named as the claimant's mate and the land is named as part of the claim. The Luna is never told. The pack is never told. The claim is filed and registered and the land is transferred, and when the Luna dies or the pack dissolves or the claim is contested, the Council holds a hearing and the claim is upheld and the land is sold." He looked at the papers on the table. "I wrote those claims. I wrote them in my own hand and I signed them with the names of clerks who were dead and I sent them to the register and the register stamped them and nobody ever looked at them again."

"Four hundred and six," Rourke said. "That is a great many."

"It is a great many." Silas turned to face him. "And you knew. You have been the culling officer for nine territories and you have signed the cull orders that came from those claims and you have never once asked where the paper came from." He looked at the pack. "I am not the only one. The Council is not one man and it is not one clerk. It is a system and I have been part of it for nineteen years and I am going to tell the Alphas every name and every claim and every deed."

Rourke hit him.

It was a backhand across the face and Silas went down on one knee and got up again with blood on his mouth.

"Rourke," I said.

"Stay out of it, Warden." Rourke turned to the pack. "You have heard him. The Council's own investigator has confessed to forgery in front of the whole pack. He is a traitor and a forger and he has been working with the Gamma of this pack to take the mill land for himself." He picked up a paper from the table. "This is a confession. It is signed by the investigator and it says the Gamma Wren Halloran knew about the forgeries and took a share of the money."

"That is a lie," I said.

"It is a paper," Rourke said. "And papers are what the Alphas will read." He held it up. "Unless the Gamma would like to make a deal. The Council's offer still stands. The wolf and the land for the pack's freedom."

I walked into the middle of the square.

"You have a paper," I said. "I have a paper too." I put my hand in my jacket and took out the two cull orders and held them up. "These are Council orders. The first is dated the twelfth of June and it authorizes the Beta of this pack to take a rogue on the north line. The second is dated the twelfth of June and it authorizes the Beta of this pack to bring Owen Halloran in for questioning. Owen Halloran died on the twenty-second of June. Ten days after the Council wrote the order that killed him." I looked at the pack. "The first calf died on the fourteenth. The cull order was written before the first calf died. There was never a rogue in this territory. The Council wrote the order and the Council sent it and the Council's hand signed it, and when my brother found out about it the Council had him killed."

The square broke into noise.

Rourke raised his hand and the men with the rifles came forward and the noise stopped.

"Warden," Rourke said quietly. "You have just made a very bad mistake. Those orders are Council property and you have stolen them and you have brought them into a pack square and waved them at a culling officer." He held out his hand. "Give them to me."

"No."

"Give them to me or I will have you arrested in front of the whole pack."

"You can arrest me in front of the whole pack," I said. "You can arrest every wolf in this square. But you cannot arrest the Alphas and the Alphas are coming. They will be here on the twenty-ninth and they will hold a hearing in this square and they will read these orders and they will read the papers in that box and they will read the confession you just wrote for a man who did not sign it." I looked at him. "So go ahead. Arrest me. And then explain to the Alphas why the Gamma of the Palouse Ridge pack is in a cell when they arrive."

Rourke looked at me for a long moment.

Then he smiled.

"The Alphas are not coming," he said. "That wire was a forgery too. I wrote it myself this morning and I put it on the mailbox. There is no hearing. There is no petition. There is no Council of Alphas coming to this territory." He put the paper down on the table. "There is only me and twelve men and a cull order and a wolf. And I am going to carry out the cull tonight."

And then the co-op blew up.

The sound came across the road and the ground shook and every wolf in the square turned and looked, and over the roof of the barn there was a column of orange and black and a light that made the whole sky red.

The grain co-op was on fire.