Maverick paused, then decided that dissembling before this man would be fatal. "I carry a paper that says this valley is open to claim."
A sharp murmur rustled through the gathered Apache warriors, several fingers tightening around the breeches of their carbines.
Lobo Negro raised one hand, and the murmurs died instantly into dead silence.
"Show me this paper," the chief said.
Maverick slowly reached inside his vest with two fingers, brought out the oiled-cloth packet, and handed it down.
Lobo Negro unfolded the parchment. He did not look at it with curiosity or confusion. He ran his thumb across the wax seal and the bold ink of Maverick's name. There was no surprise in his dark eyes—only a cold, calculating satisfaction.
"You have seen this document before," Maverick said, his brow furrowing.
"I have," Lobo Negro answered. He folded the paper carefully along its original creases and handed it back up to Maverick. "Because I was the one who sent it to Tucson."
Maverick stared at the chief, stunned. "You? Why would an Apache leader file an American land grant in a white man's court under my name?"
Lobo Negro did not answer immediately. He turned his gaze toward the river where the clear current broke over smooth river stones. "Dismount. Walk with me."
Maverick swung his leg over Bramble, his boots hitting the springy, loam-rich earth. He loosened Bramble's cinch, handed the reins to a young boy who stood nearby with solemn curiosity, and followed the chief along the bank.
As they walked, the magnificence of the valley revealed itself in every direction. The soil was pitch-black, crumbly, and sweet-smelling, free of the caliche rock that choked the upland basins. Wild clover grew knee-high among the willow thickets. A man with five hundred head of cattle could winter them here without losing a single calf to hunger. A family could dig a garden that would feed them through any drought the territory could muster.
"You want this land," Lobo Negro stated without looking back.
"I'd be a liar if I told you I didn't," Maverick confessed. "I've slept on hard rocks from the Pecos to the Colorado. I never saw ground like this."
"This land is not for sale to white men," the chief said. "The soldiers in their blue coats want to round us up and herd us onto the white alkali mud of San Carlos where our children will cough their lungs out and starve. But the law in Washington recognizes paper titles. A claim registered to an American citizen with an honest hand cannot be seized by the cavalry without an act of Congress."
Maverick stopped in his tracks. "You used my name to build a legal shield against the army."
"Only half the shield," Lobo Negro turned to face him. "A paper means nothing if the man whose name is on it rides away, or if he betrays us to the land syndicates in Prescott. Land belongs to family. And there is only one way you will ever touch an acre of this valley."
"What way?"
Lobo Negro looked straight into Maverick's eyes. "You will marry my daughter."
The words hung in the warm afternoon air between them like an unexploded shell.
Maverick felt a dry chuckle bubble up in his throat, but looking at Lobo Negro’s chiseled, unmoving features, the laughter died before it reached his lips.
"Your daughter?" Maverick asked, shaking his head slightly. "Chief, I rode into these hills looking for dirt to graze cows on. I'm thirty-two years old, rough-hewn, and haven't lived under a roof with a woman since my mother died of fever when I was twelve. I'm no husband for an Apache princess."
"She is no princess," Lobo Negro said curtly. "This is not a white man's fairy tale. If you take her as your wife, by tribal law and by the church priest who comes through the southern missions once a season, you become my kin. The land on the eastern bend—four hundred acres of timber and bottomland—will be deeded to your name. No territorial governor can take it, and no cattle baron can drive you off."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you take your horse, fill your canteen, and ride back into the desert before sundown. And if you ever bring soldiers or surveyors back into these mountains, my warriors will leave your skull mounted on a stick at the pass."
The threat was delivered without heat, almost as a matter-of-fact observation. Maverick knew the chief meant every syllable.
"Let me see her," Maverick said. "If you're proposing a life sentence for both of us, I have a right to look the woman in the eye."
"No," Lobo Negro answered instantly.
Maverick frowned. "No? You expect a man to pledge his life blindfolded?"
"She does not show her face to outsiders," the chief said, his voice tightening. "Not anymore."
"Why not? Is she sick?"
Lobo Negro’s jaw set hard. A darkness flickered across his gaze—something painful and deeply buried. When he spoke, his words were harsh, blunt, and deliberate, though they sounded as if they had been rehearsed many times to blunt their cruelty.