Chapter 61: What Burned

Harold picked up the shovel and stood there with it in his hands.

Then the Corrigan boys picked up their buckets. Mrs. Pike went to her truck and got a rifle out of the cab and put it on her shoulder and did not say anything. Old Mr. Carter picked up a length of fence post. The young border-wardens came out of the crowd and stood behind me on the loading dock. The co-op men came. The farmers from the west line came.

I stood on the loading dock and counted them the way I count things when I am scared. There were thirty-one.

"Go home and get your rifles," I said. "Go home and get your coats and your boots and tell your families to stay inside and lock the doors. We meet at the mill road in an hour."

They went.

Elias came up beside me.

"An hour is not enough time," he said.

"An hour is all we have. Rourke will hear what we are doing before the hour is out and he will put his men on the pack house roof." I got down off the loading dock. "We are not going to fight him on the roof. We are going to go in through the tunnel."

"The tunnel is in the mill," Elias said. "It goes from the circle to the pack house and it comes up in the cellar under the kitchen."

"The cellar under the kitchen is where Harlan keeps the preserves," I said. "There is a trapdoor in the floor and it is not locked and nobody in this pack has used it since the war. If we go down the tunnel we come up in the kitchen and Rourke will not have a man in the kitchen because Rourke does not know the tunnel exists."

June came up with the ledger under her arm.

"And the key?" she said. "The key is in the tack room and the tack room is in the barn and the barn is across the yard from the pack house. If we come up in the kitchen we are still fifty feet from the barn."

"Then we send two wolves to the barn while the rest of us hold the kitchen." I looked at Elias. "You and me. The rest of them make noise in the front and draw the men to the door and we go out the back and across the yard and into the barn and we get the key."

Elias looked at the smoke still coming off the co-op.

"It is a plan," he said. "It is not a good one."

"It is the only one."

We went to the mill at six in the morning with thirty-one wolves behind us and the sun coming up gray over the ridge.

The mill was where we had left it. The door was open and the floor was empty and the gap behind the grain chute was there with the ladder going up. But the tunnel was not in the loft.

It was under the mill.

Elias took me down through the trapdoor and into the cellar where the founders had held the Luna and where Clara Renn's mother had hidden her. There was a wall at the back of the cellar that looked like stone and was not stone, and when Elias put his shoulder against it and pushed, it swung in.

The tunnel was dark and low and it smelled of wet earth and old stone, and it went east under the field and it was wide enough for two wolves to walk side by side.

We went in with a lantern. It took us half an hour to walk it. It came up in the floor of the pack house kitchen, and the trapdoor at the top was wood and it was not locked, and when I put my ear against it I could hear boots on the floor above and a voice that was Rourke's.

"Put four men on the porch and four on the roof and keep the rest in the yard," Rourke said. "They will come at the front and they will come loud and we will be waiting for them."

I put my hand on the trapdoor and did not lift it.

"He has twelve men," I said. "Four on the porch, four on the roof, four in the yard. That leaves the kitchen empty."

"And the barn?"

"The barn is fifty feet from the back door. If we go out the back while the pack comes at the front, we have maybe three minutes before Rourke knows what is happening."

Elias put his hand on the trapdoor.

"Then we do not waste the three minutes," he said.

We went back down the tunnel and out through the mill and up the ridge to where the pack was waiting.

Harold had the shovel. Mrs. Pike had her rifle. The Corrigan boys had their father's rifles and the young border-wardens had a length of chain and a crowbar. June had the ledger and a pistol she had taken from the co-op drawer. Dale was standing at the back of the crowd with his coat on and his face gray and he did not come forward.

"Harold," I said. "You take the front. You and the Corrigans and the co-op men. You make as much noise as you can and you do not go onto the porch. You stay in the yard and you shout and you fire into the air and you make Rourke think there are a hundred of us."

Harold nodded.

"Mrs. Pike," I said. "You take the west side of the yard with the farmers and you cut off the road. If anybody runs, you stop them."

Mrs. Pike put her rifle on her shoulder.

"Elias and I are going through the tunnel," I said. "We come up in the kitchen and we go out the back and across the yard to the barn. We get the key out of the tack room and we go back through the tunnel and down to the mill and we open the vault."

"And if Rourke catches you in the yard?" June said.

"Then you will hear it," I said.

We went down the tunnel at seven o'clock in the morning with a lantern and a crowbar and my brother's knife in my jacket.

The tunnel was cold and the floor was wet and the walls were stone and there were roots coming through the ceiling in places. We walked in silence and the lantern threw our shadows on the wall and the mark on my shoulder was warm and steady.

We came to the end of the tunnel and the trapdoor was above us.

I put my ear against it.

Nothing. No boots. No voices.

I lifted the trapdoor an inch and looked.

The kitchen was empty. The stove was cold and the table was clear and there was a kettle on the shelf and a row of jars and the back door was shut.

I pushed the trapdoor up and climbed out and Elias came after me.

We went to the back door and I put my hand on the latch and opened it.

The yard was full of men.

There were men on the porch and men on the roof and men in the yard with rifles and there was a truck at the gate and a man standing on the hood of the truck with a lantern in his hand.

It was not Rourke. It was one of Rourke's men and he had a lantern and he was looking at the back door.

"There they are," he said.

The rifles came up.

And then the front of the pack house exploded.

It was not a fire. It was sound. Thirty-one wolves in the front yard shouting and firing into the air and banging on the fence and Harold's voice going over all of it like a bell.

The men in the yard turned.

Elias took my hand and we ran.

We went across the yard with the rifles coming up behind us and the shouting in front of us, and we got to the barn and I pulled the door open and we went in and I shut it behind us and put the bar down.

The barn was dark and it smelled of hay and horses. The tack room was at the back.

"Go," Elias said. "I will hold the door."

I ran.

The tack room was the same as it had been. The saddle rack and the bench and the shelf of ledgers. I got down on my knees and put my hands in the gap and pulled the board out and reached into the dark behind it.

The box was there. I pulled it out and opened it.

The letters were gone and the coat was gone and the scarf was gone and the knife was gone.

There was one thing in the box.

It was a key. It was iron and it was old and it was the size of my hand.

I picked it up.

And then the barn door came down.