Chapter 6

"Yes.""Why?" Maverick demanded. "An Apache chief doesn't hand his daughter to a wandering cowboy who turns up with a saddlebag full of papers. Why me? And why her?"Lobo Negro turned his head slowly, looking toward the shaded porch of a small, well-kept shelter built fifty yards back from the river."My daughter," Lobo Negro said, his voice dropping into a tone of quiet, protective gravity, "deserves a chance.""A chance at what?""At a life beyond what others here have decided for her," the chief said.Maverick followed the chief’s gaze across the sunlit grass.

Sitting on the low wooden porch of the shelter, mending a leather bridle with a bone awl, was a young woman.She was perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four years old. She wore a simple, dark cotton dress trimmed with silver beads around the collar, her thick black hair braided neatly down her back. Her face was striking—high cheekbones, a strong, straight jawline, and dark, intelligent eyes.But as Maverick watched, she stood up to reach for a spool of sinew on a high shelf.She moved with a pronounced, halting limp. Her right leg was shortened, twisted slightly inward at the ankle—the result of a childhood fall or an improperly healed bone. She did not stumble, nor did she ask for help; she retrieved the spool with quiet, practiced efficiency and sat back down to her work.As she moved, Maverick noticed two young men walking past her porch. They did not speak to her. They did not greet her. They looked away, deliberately averting their eyes as if she were invisible—or worse, a silent embarrassment to the camp.The woman’s face remained entirely unreadable. She did not look hurt, nor did she weep. She simply kept her chin lifted, her dark eyes fixed on her leatherwork, enduring their silent rejection with a cold, impenetrable wall of reserve.Maverick felt a sudden, sharp knot form in his chest. He knew that look. He had seen it in the eyes of stray dogs kicked off saloon porches, in the faces of old cowboys whose bodies were broken by broncs, and in his own reflection in mirror-glass when men told him to move along."Her name is Kee-dah," Lobo Negro said softly, standing beside Maverick. "When she was seven years old, a horse fell on the rocky ridge. The bone broke inside her leg. Our healers saved her life, but the bone healed crooked.""She walks fine," Maverick noted quietly."She walks," Lobo Negro agreed. "She tans hides better than any woman in this camp. She can track an elk through dry stone. She can read the sky better than our elders. But in the eyes of the young men here..."The chief paused, his jaw tightening with a father's ancient, helpless anger.

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