Chapter 77: Silas's Deed

Mrs. Pike came back in twenty minutes with a shoebox under her arm and put it on the table.

There were two hundred tickets in it. They were small and yellow and they had the co-op stamp on them and the date and the weight and the price, and Mrs. Pike had kept every one of them in order and wrapped in string.

Ada took the box and turned it out on the table.

"Read them," she said.

I read them. I read every ticket from 1973 to 1979 and I put them in a row on the table by date and by price. And the pattern was there the way Mrs. Pike said it was there.

The price of feed went up on the twelfth of June every year. It went up by the same amount every year. Two dollars a ton in 1973 and two dollars a ton in 1974 and two dollars a ton in 1975 and the same in 1976 and 1977 and 1978. And on every ticket the twelfth of June was a Wednesday or a Thursday or a Friday, and the price never went up on a Monday or a Tuesday.

"It is not the market," I said. "The market does not go up on the same day of the week every year."

Ada looked at the tickets.

"Who set the price?" she said.

"The Council sets the price of feed in this territory," I said. "There is a co-op board and the board votes and the board takes the Council's price because the Council owns the grain elevators and the elevators set the price." I put my hand on the row of tickets. "And the co-op board in this territory has been Dale and Harold and Mrs. Pike and a man from the Council who comes to the meetings and does not say anything."

Ada looked at the six Alphas.

"The Council has been raising the price of feed on the twelfth of June every year since 1973," she said. "And the twelfth of June is the day the cull order was written and the day the first payment came into the co-op ledger." She looked at me. "Gamma. What is the connection?"

I sat down.

"I do not know," I said. "But there is a man in the pack house who might. Silas has been the Council's investigator for nineteen years and he has been signing the feed contracts since 1965."

Ada turned to the herald.

"Bring the investigator," she said.

They brought Silas out of the pack house with his arm out of the sling and his face still bruised and his gray suit brushed. He came and stood in front of the table and Ada put the tickets in front of him.

"Investigator," she said. "You have signed the feed contracts for this territory since 1965. Explain the twelfth of June."

Silas looked at the tickets for a long time.

"There is no explanation," he said. "It is a date. It is the date the Council's fiscal year begins. The Council raises the price of feed and grain and land on the first day of its fiscal year and the fiscal year begins on the twelfth of June." He looked up. "Every territory the Council holds has the same date. It is not a conspiracy. It is a calendar."

The square was quiet.

"Then why did the cull order come on the same date?" I said.

Silas looked at me.

"Because the Council writes its orders at the start of the fiscal year," he said. "The cull orders and the trial claims and the land deeds. They are all written in the same week because that is when the Council sits and does its business." He put his hand on the table. "Warden, I have been telling you for three weeks that the Council is a system. This is the system. It is a calendar and a register and a clerk who signs whatever is put in front of him. There is no room in it for a conspiracy because the whole of it is the conspiracy and it has been going on for eighty-five years and nobody has ever had to plan it."

Ada looked at him.

"Then explain the deed," she said.

"What deed?"

"The deed to the grain land that you have in your folder," Ada said. "The one you have been carrying since you came to this territory."

Silas was quiet.

"I do not have a deed in my folder," he said.

"You have a deed in your folder," Ada said. "The Gamma told this tribunal that you came to this territory to buy grain land and that you had a deed with you. Show it to me."

Silas opened his folder.

He took out a paper and put it on the table.

It was a deed. It was the deed to the grain land on the north line and the east field and the mill road. It was dated the twelfth of June and it had the Council seal on it and it had a name on it.

The name was not Silas.

The name was Wren Halloran.

I stood up.

"What is this?" I said.

"It is a deed," Silas said. "It was drawn in Boise in June and it was sent to me with my instructions when I came to this territory. I was to bring it to you and I was to have you sign it." He looked at me. "I was to tell you that it was a standard grain land purchase and that the Council would pay you three times the value and that you would be doing your pack a service."

"You were going to have me sign my own land over to the Council," I said.

"I was going to have you sign your own land over to the Council." Silas put his hand flat on the deed. "And there is a thing on the deed that I did not see until I read it in the light of a lantern on Tuesday night. There is an annex on the back. It lists the parcels and the parcel numbers and the names of the owners. And there is one parcel on that annex that is not the grain land and not the east field and not the mill road."

He turned the deed over.

"There is a parcel on the annex that is the founders' circle," he said. "It is listed as a boundary monument and it is assessed at one dollar and it has been in the Council's name since 1891. And under the parcel number there is a note in the chief clerk's hand." He looked up. "The note says: this parcel is to be acquired by any means necessary before the fiscal year ends."

The square was silent.

"The Council was not buying the grain land," Silas said. "The Council was buying the circle. The grain land was the cover and the east field was the road and the mill was the vault and the circle was the thing they wanted." He put the deed down. "And they were going to have you sign it, warden. They were going to have you sign away the circle with your own hand."

I sat down in the chair.

"Then it is not the land at all," I said.

"It was never the land," Silas said.