Chapter 99: The Pack's Beginnings

I went out to the gate with Hannah and Silas and Elias and the Kessler wolves behind me.

The man at the gate was not the archivist and he was not the district officer. He was older and heavy and he had a Council coat and a lantern and twelve men behind him on the road.

"Beta," he said. "I am the Council's warden for the eastern district. I have a warrant for your arrest and I have a warrant for the wolf known as Elias and I have a warrant for the woman known as Ada Kessler."

"On what charge?" I said.

"On the charge of claiming a territory without a lawful deed and on the charge of harboring a rogue and on the charge of conspiracy against the Council of Alphas."

I looked at the paper in his hand.

"That warrant is signed by the chief clerk," I said.

"It is."

"The chief clerk has been forging trial claims for nineteen years and he has been named in a register in Boise and he is going to be tried by the full Council of Alphas in three days."

The warden looked at me.

"The Council has not charged the chief clerk," he said. "The Council has charged you."

The road was quiet.

"Then the Council has been lied to," I said. "And I am not going to Boise with you tonight. I am going to stand in front of the full Council of Alphas in three days and I am going to put the register and the crates and the photograph and the stones in front of them and I am going to let them decide."

"The warrant says I am to take you tonight."

"The warrant is a paper," I said. "And I have been arrested by papers three times in the last week and every one of them was a forgery."

The warden came forward.

"Beta," he said, "I have twelve men and a warrant and I have been doing this for twenty years. I am not going to argue with you."

And then Ada Kessler came out of the house.

She was ninety-four years old and she walked with a stick and she came down the path in her nightgown and her shawl and her white hair down and she stopped in front of the warden and looked up at him.

"You are a wolf of the eastern district," she said.

"I am."

"Then you are a wolf of the pack that my grandmother's sister belonged to before the founders came." She put her stick on the ground. "Do you know what the founders did to this territory in 1891?"

The warden was quiet.

"I know the stories," he said.

"The stories are true," Ada Kessler said. "And I am the last wolf alive who was here when it happened. I was six years old and I remember the wagons and the deed and the men and the Luna." She looked at him. "And I remember the day the old Alpha made the bargain in the circle. It was the eleventh of April, 1897, and I was twelve years old and I was in the trees with my mother and we watched him do it."

The warden did not move.

"The bargain was this," Ada Kessler said. "The founders would have the land but never the heart of it. The curse would go to the Luna's line in every generation. And the curse would not end until the Luna's line came home and claimed the land at the full moon." She put her hand on the gate. "And the Luna's line is standing in front of you. She is the Beta of the Palouse Ridge pack and she is the fourth daughter's great-granddaughter and she is the only wolf in this territory who can break the curse."

The warden looked at me.

"That is a story," he said.

"It is a story with a paper," I said. "There is a register in Boise with eleven territories in it and four hundred and six Lunas and a page in the founders' record that says two bloodlines, one claim, no cure. And there is a chief clerk in Boise who has been writing the paper for nineteen years and a Councilman in a cell who has confessed to ordering my brother's death. And in three days the full Council of Alphas is going to read all of it."

The warden stood in the road.

And then a wolf came up the road behind him on a bicycle.

It was a boy of about fifteen and he had a telegram in his hand and he came off the bicycle and ran to the warden.

"Warden," he said. "This came to the depot in Walla Walla an hour ago and the depot sent it up the road."

The warden took the telegram and read it.

His face did not change but his hand on the paper did.

"The full Council of Alphas has been called to Boise," he said. "Not in three days. Tomorrow. The chief clerk has called it early and the first thing on the list is the removal of the seven Alphas who sat on the tribunal and the second thing is the arrest of the Beta of the Palouse Ridge pack."

The road was quiet.

"Then we go to Boise tonight," I said.

The warden looked at me.

"Beta," he said, "I have a warrant."

"You have a warrant signed by a forger," I said. "And I have a council of Alphas that has been called early to remove the only seven wolves in Boise who have read the register." I stepped forward. "Warden. You have twelve men and a warrant and twenty years. I have a pack and a register and five Lunas and a curse and a Councilman in a cell. And I am telling you that if you take me to Boise tonight, you will be the wolf who arrested the Luna on a forged warrant on the night before the Council met to cover up eighty-five years of fraud."

The warden stood in the road with the telegram in his hand.

He was quiet for a long time.

And then he folded the telegram and put it in his coat and turned to his men.

"We are going back to Walla Walla," he said.

The men looked at each other.

"Warden," one of them said.

"We are going back to Walla Walla," the warden said again. "And I am going to write a report that says the Beta of the Palouse Ridge pack was not at the Kessler pack when I arrived and that I searched the road for six hours and found nothing." He looked at me. "Beta. If you are going to Boise, go tonight. And if you get there before me, tell the Alphas that the warden of the eastern district is on his way with a report and that he will swear to the telegram and to the warrant and to the whole of it."

He got in his truck and the trucks turned around and went back down the road.

I stood at the gate.

"Ada," I said. "Get your coat. You are coming to Boise."

Ada Kessler looked at me.

"I am ninety-four years old," she said.

"And you are the only wolf alive who was in this territory before the founders came," I said. "You are the only wolf alive who saw the bargain made. And in a room full of Alphas who have been told the curse is a story, you are the only one who can tell them the truth."

Ada Kessler stood in the snow with her stick in her hand.

"Then I am coming," she said. "But I am going to need a blanket and a bottle of something warm and I am going to need somebody to carry me down the steps."

Hannah put her arm around her grandmother.

"I will carry you," she said.

We went to Boise that night.