Chapter 63: Dale's Money

The Alphas came out of the trees on the north line at eleven o'clock in the morning, and there were seven of them.

They came on foot with two wolves in front carrying a horn and a staff, and behind them there were four more in dark coats and then a woman in a gray cloak with her hood down who was older than Maeve and walked with a stick. They came across the east field in the snow without hurrying and they did not look at anything except the standing stone and the circle of stones and the three of us standing beside it.

The wolf with the staff stopped at the edge of the circle.

"I am the herald of the Council of Alphas," he said. "The Alphas have read the petition of the Palouse Ridge pack and the Kessler pack and the river pack, and they have come to this territory to hold a hearing." He looked at me. "Are you the Gamma who sent the petition?"

"I am."

"Then you will bring the petition and the evidence to the pack square at noon." He looked at the standing stone and at the stones in their ring. "And you will bring the stones. The Alphas will see the stones."

The woman in the gray cloak came forward. She was old and her face was brown and lined and her eyes were the pale gray of the Council and she looked at me for a long moment.

"I am Ada," she said. "I am the Alpha of the Boise pack and I have been on the Council of Alphas for forty years. I have read a great many petitions in forty years and most of them are lies." She looked at the stones and then at me. "But I have never read a petition that said the founders of a territory stole a Luna and drowned her and buried the proof under a mill. So I am going to hold a hearing and I am going to hear the whole of it and when I am done I am going to give a judgment." She turned and walked back toward the trees. "Noon. The pack square. Bring the stones and bring the paper and bring every wolf who has a thing to say."

They went.

Hannah sat down on the root.

"Seven Alphas," she said. "I have never seen one Alpha in my life and I have just seen seven."

Arthur Renn closed the record.

"Then we had better have something to show them," he said.

I sat down on the moss with the ledger in my lap and opened it.

It was wet at the edges and the pages were stuck together in places and the ink had run in the back where the water had got in. I turned the pages slow with my thumb and read the entries.

The first part of the ledger was the co-op business. Grain weights and wagon numbers and the names of farmers and the dates. It went back to 1968. It was in Harold's hand for most of it and then in Dale's hand from 1973 and then in mine from 1977.

The second part was the payments.

They were in a different hand. They were in Dale's hand and they were written small in the margin of the co-op pages, and they were not labeled. There was a date and there was an amount and there was a letter and a number.

I turned the pages slow.

"June," I said. "Come here."

She came and sat beside me.

"Look at this," I said. "Here. On the twenty-second of June. There is a payment in the margin. Two hundred dollars. And there is a letter and a number beside it."

June looked.

"E. R. 12," she said. "What does it mean?"

"It means Erik Renn and the twelfth of the month," I said. "The Council paid Dale two hundred dollars on the twenty-second of June. The day my brother died."

June was quiet.

"There are more," she said.

"There are more." I turned the pages. "There is one on the twelfth of June. One on the fourteenth. One on the fifteenth. One on the twenty-second. One on the twenty-third. Five payments in twelve days." I put my finger on the page. "The twelfth is the day the cull order was written. The fourteenth is the day the first calf died. The fifteenth is the day Dale came to the pack meeting and told us the rogue had been on the north line for a week. The twenty-second is the day my brother died. The twenty-third is the day the coroner signed the report."

I closed the ledger.

"He was paid," I said. "He was paid for the cull order and he was paid for the calves and he was paid for my brother and he was paid for the report."

Hannah came and looked at the page.

"Then you have him," she said. "You have Dale and you have the Council both."

I stood up.

"I have to show this to Harlan," I said.

We went down the ridge at eleven o'clock with the stones in the box and the ledger under my arm and the record in Arthur Renn's hands and the key in my jacket, and we came to the pack house yard with the snow on the ground and the smoke still coming off the co-op down the road.

The yard was full of wolves. There were pack wolves and there were Alphas and there were Council men and there were men from Rourke's company standing on the porch with their hands tied and their rifles stacked against the rail.

Harlan was on the steps.

He had a bandage on his head and his coat was torn and he was standing up straight with his hat on and his beard combed and he looked like the Alpha of a pack that had fought a war and won it.

"Wren," he said. "The Alphas are in the pack house and they want to see the evidence and they want to see it now."

"Where is Dale?"

"He is in the barn under guard."

"Then bring him out," I said. "I have a thing to show him and I want the Alphas to see his face when he looks at it."

Harlan looked at me for a moment. Then he turned and nodded to the Corrigan boys and they went to the barn.

Dale came out with his hands tied and his face gray. He came across the yard with the snow on his boots and he stopped in front of me.

"Wren," he said.

I held up the ledger.

"This is the co-op ledger," I said. "It was in the office when the fire started and my sister went back into a burning building to get it. It has every grain ticket and every wagon weight and every payment this co-op has made since 1968." I opened it to the page. "And in the margin there is a list of payments in your hand. Two hundred dollars on the twelfth of June. Two hundred on the fourteenth. Two hundred on the fifteenth. Two hundred on the twenty-second. Two hundred on the twenty-third. Every one of them has a letter and a number beside it. E. R. and a date."

Dale looked at the page.

His face did not change.

"I knew," he said.

"You knew what?"

"I knew the payments were there. I wrote them. I wrote them small because I did not want anyone to see them and I wrote them in a book I thought nobody would read." He looked up. "They are the Council's money. Two hundred a month for the cull and the quiet. I have been taking it since 1973."

"Two hundred a month," I said. "For six years."

"For six years." Dale looked at Harlan. "Alpha, I have taken two hundred dollars a month from the Council since 1973 and I have written it down in the co-op ledger and I have spent it on the pack house roof and the barn and the fence line and the truck. I told myself it was for the pack. I told myself I was taking the Council's money and spending it on the pack and that made it all right." He looked at me. "It did not make it all right. It made me the Council's man and I have been the Council's man for six years."

Harlan came down the steps.

"Dale," he said. "You are under arrest for murder and for treason against this pack. You will be held until the Alphas give judgment."

Dale nodded.

"I know," he said.

And then June came up beside me with the ledger and said, "Wren, there is one more page. At the back. I did not see it until just now."

She turned the book around.

There was a page at the very back of the ledger that I had not seen. It was in my mother's hand and it was dated 1968 and it was not a payment and it was not a co-op entry.

It said: If anyone finds this book, the land under the mill is not the Council's. It was never the Council's. It was the Luna's land and it was taken from her and it has been taken from us and the deed is a lie. I am writing this because I have written to the Council and the Council will not answer and I am afraid that one day someone will come for my children and there will be nothing left to prove what I knew.

And under it, in the same hand, a line that had been written later and in a different ink.

The old woman at the end of the mill road knows. Her name is Clara. She has the stones.

I stood in the pack house yard with the ledger in my hands.

"June," I said. "Where did you find this?"

"It was in the back of the book," she said. "Behind the last page. It was folded in and I did not see it because the water had stuck it to the cover."

I turned the page over.

There was one more line on the back, written small and close and in a hand that was shaky with age.

Tell Wren she was right to be angry. Tell her I am sorry.

I sat down on the step.

And then Ada came out of the pack house with her gray cloak and her stick and said, "Gamma. The Alphas are ready. Bring the book."