Chapter 14

He wore his old canvas coat, but his face held no fatigue, no dust, and no lingering shadow of the wandering cowboy who had spent five years running from his own loneliness.The cabin door opened quietly behind him.Kee-dah stepped out onto the porch, wrapping a wool blanket around her shoulders against the crisp morning air. She walked with her halting stride, coming to stand right beside him, resting her head comfortably against his broad shoulder.Maverick wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her close against his side, feeling the steady, warm beat of her heart against his ribs.Out in the green pasture, fifty head of fat Hereford cattle were grazing peacefully near the cottonwood trees—cattle Maverick had bought at the Prescott market with the proceeds of his first timber harvest."What are you thinking about, husband?" Kee-dah asked softly, looking up into his face.Maverick looked out over the green valley—the clear river sparkling in the morning light, the rising smoke from the camp fires upstream, the fat cattle, and the strong, beautiful woman holding his hand.He reached into his pocket, pulling out the old oilcloth papers that had brought him across the desert seven months ago.Slowly, deliberately, Maverick folded the papers, walked over to the stone chimney hearth on the porch, and tossed them directly into the small fire burning beneath the coffee pot.The yellow paper caught fire instantly, curling into black ash and vanishing into the smoke.Kee-dah looked at him in surprise. "Why did you burn your claim?"Maverick smiled—a slow, deep, wonderful smile that transformed his weathered face. He reached out, taking both of her hands into his broad, calloused palms."Because I don't need a piece of paper from Prescott to tell me where I belong anymore," Maverick said softly. "My claim isn't written in ink, Kee-dah. It’s written right here."

Years passed, and the green valley beyond the eastern mesas became a legend told across the Arizona Territory.It was a place where no tax certificate could break a family, where no speculator could steal a water right, and where two worlds lived together in unbroken peace beneath the wide, unbroken sky.Down at the eastern bend of the river, the log house on Maverick's fifty acres was filled with life, warmth, and laughter.Three children—two dark-haired boys with their mother's quick intelligence and a dark-eyed girl who walked with her father's quiet, steady confidence—played in the tall grass beside the water, building toy rafts out of cottonwood bark and river reeds.Every autumn, when the cottonwood leaves turned to brilliant gold and the mountain winds blew cool off the mesas, travelers passing through the valley would see an older, tall man with silver-streaked hair standing on the high ridge overlooking the basin.

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