Chapter 7

"...they see only a broken vessel. They see a woman who cannot run fast in the mountains, a woman who they believe brings bad fortune to a hunter's lodge. For five years, every man who sought a wife has walked past her door to ask for someone else."Lobo Negro turned back to face Maverick, his dark eyes burning with fierce intensity."I will not leave my daughter to be an object of pity when I am gone," the chief said. "I want a man for her who does not belong to the gossip of this camp. A man who knows what it is to be an outsider. A man who will look at her strength, not her ankle."

Maverick stood in the warm breeze, looking from the tall, proud leader to the young woman sitting alone on the porch."And you picked me," Maverick said, his voice flat. "Because I was desperate enough for land to take whatever bargain you threw at me."Lobo Negro’s expression did not soften, but his tone became deeply honest. "I picked you because I sent scouts to the border ranches six months ago. They watched you, Maverick Cole. They watched you work the cattle on the Miller ranch. They saw you stay behind in a blizzard to find a stray calf that wasn't yours. They saw you step between a drunk cowboy and a defenseless Mexican hand in Bisbee."Maverick stared at him, stunned. "You've been tracking me for six months?""I do not give my daughter to a bad man," Lobo Negro said simply. "Land can be bought or lost. Character cannot be forged in a day. You want a place where no man can tell you to move on. My daughter wants a home where no man looks at her with pity. The bargain is fair."Maverick looked down at his calloused hands. He thought of his thirty-two years of wandering—the dust, the cold bunkhouses, the endless fences he had built for men who didn't even remember his name. He thought of the green valley, the clear water, and the fifty acres of black soil beside the eastern bend.Then he looked back at Kee-dah.She had stopped her work. She was looking across the sunlit grass, her dark eyes locked squarely onto Maverick's face.She was not cowering. She was not begging with her eyes. She looked at him with a fierce, quiet challenge—as if daring him to show the same shallow judgment as every other man who had ever walked past her porch.Maverick took a slow, deep breath."I won't do it," Maverick said firmly.Lobo Negro’s eyebrows narrowed, a dangerous flicker of disappointment touching his dark eyes. "You reject the offer?""I reject the way you're doing it," Maverick corrected, stepping toward the chief. "I won't marry a woman because her father traded her like a parcel of river bottomland. And I sure as hell won't let her think I took her just to get my hands on fifty acres of grass."The chief remained silent, listening."If I stay," Maverick continued, his gray eyes locking onto Lobo Negro's face with absolute conviction, "I stay as a worker. I'll work your fields, I'll herd your horses, I'll earn my keep for one month. In that month, I get to know your daughter. And she gets to know me. If she wants nothing to do with me at the end of thirty days, I saddle my horse and ride out, and you keep your land."

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