Chapter 9

"Which part?""The part where you said you would not trade for me like river land."Maverick set the fish bone down on a leaf. "It was the truth. A man who takes a wife just to get fifty acres of grass isn't a man worth having around. And a woman who gets traded away by her family doesn't get a real choice. I've had enough people telling me where I belong in my life. I figure you have too."Kee-dah stared at him for a long, silent five seconds. The river rustled softly through the willows behind them."You speak strange words for a cowboy," she said softly."I’ve had thirty-two years to think 'em up," Maverick replied with a faint, genuine smile. "And most of 'em weren't worth saying until today."For the first time since he had arrived in the green valley, the ghost of a small, beautiful smile touched the corner of Kee-dah’s lips.

Over the next two weeks, the green valley settled into a quiet, natural rhythm.Maverick did not act like an owner, nor did he act like a guest. Every morning at sunrise, he reported to the horse paddocks, helping the young men repair broken cedar fences, shoeing wild colts that had been brought down from the high mesas, and digging irrigation trenches through the black bottomland soil.At first, the young Apache warriors watched him with deep suspicion. They expected the white cowboy to be lazy, arrogant, or quick to give orders.Instead, they found a man who worked harder than any three of them combined. Maverick could swing a heavy iron sledgehammer for six hours without complaining. He could handle a wild three-year-old Mustang without using a whip or a harsh bit. And when a calf got trapped in a muddy river sinkhole, Maverick plunged waist-deep into the freezing brown water without hesitation, hauling the heavy animal out on his broad shoulders.Slowly, imperceptibly, the cold wall of suspicion began to crumble.The young warriors stopped avoiding his eyes. They began calling him by his name—Cole. They sat near his willow shelter in the evenings, watching him carve replacement axe handles out of tough hickory wood, trading short, quiet jokes about horses and weather.And every afternoon, Kee-dah came down to the river.She did not bring him food because her father ordered it; she came because she wanted to watch him work. She sat on the flat granite stone, her slender fingers busy weaving sweetgrass baskets or mending leather reins, while Maverick worked nearby.They talked.Not about land claims, treaties, or grand promises. They talked about simple, real things. Kee-dah taught him the Apache names for the desert plants—which roots could heal a fever, which berries could dye leather, and which mountain grasses meant water lay close beneath the stone.Maverick told her about the vast plains of Texas, the freezing cattle drives through Kansas blizzards, and the lonely, quiet nights he had spent watching the stars from the back of a tired horse.

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