Logan's Mountain

Logan's Mountain: Chapter 3

Over the next few weeks, both Michael and his sister exhausted every avenue that had been available to them, but no one was breathing a whisper about who (or what) Logan was.  They spoke to the nearby Alphas; they spoke to Were historians, and they were almost desperate enough to consider the idea of contacting palm readers or psychics.

The Council, as per their usual, had been no help whatsoever.  Indeed, their representatives had been strangely quiet when Michael reported his intent to become the Lojala Alpha, and when no prospective Alpha challengers had shown up during the month-long challenge window,  he'd officially become Alpha Michael-- though he generally shuddered when his packmates called him by his now rightful title.

The dead wolves had been buried as heroes of the pack and the none of their survivors were especially put out by the fact that the war alert had been cancelled.  Border skirmishes were a fact of life in the Were community and feuds were generally avoided.

Michael hadn't renounced any of the claims that Alpha Brett had made before he'd been killed for there had been no real need to do so.  Other than Mount Ulysses, Lojala had already cleared the new territories of rogues and Michael had given very explicit orders for the pack to avoid Logan's mountain.  So all things considered, things were pretty calm as Michael conducted his daily morning meeting.

"So... did he take the beer?

"Both casks were gone this morning, Alpha.  I can't imagine that anyone else would have taken them."

Redmond spoke up, "You know, he isn't the worst neighbor we've ever had.  He minds his own business and has no territorial ambitions.  I can't imagine an enemy ever making it through his territory to get to us.  He'd probably cut them to ribbons."

Michael stopped speaking for a moment and glanced over to his sister.  She'd been quiet through the entire meeting, unusually quiet for Leary.  He'd noticed that she seemed to be engrossed in an old leather-bound book of some sort.

"Whatcha got there, Sis?"

"It's a book, bro.  People hide information in these things."

"Uh huh... and it is important to be reading this book during our meeting because..."

"Logan left it when he took the beer."

Michael's head swung around long enough to glare at Redmond, his newly promoted Beta.  "And I'm just hearing about this now because..."

"Oh don't get your knickers in a knot, Mike," his sister snapped, "The meeting isn't over and I needed to go through it to be able to tell y'all about it."

"Okay, I'll bite," Michael replied with a sigh.  "Tell us all about it.... please."

"It looks like a colonial era book on North American botany, and it looks like it was hand inked.  Have you ever heard of someone named John Bartram?"

"Nope."

I did a Google search before we came in here.  Evidently he is considered to be the father of American Botany.  If this book is authentic, it is priceless.  If it isn't authentic, it is still extremely old and completely unknown.

"He left us a priceless book for the cost of two casks of porter?  Any clue why?"

"If only..."

He didn't like her answer, but he swallowed his irritation and instead asked, "So... what's in it?"

"Mostly hand drawn pictures of plants and trees, all of them native to North America.  It seems as if he was preparing this book for a European audience.  According to the Google link that I saw, he was greatly regarded in Europe for his work in the Americas; he sent hundreds of samples back to Europe and greatly increased the world's body of botanical information."