Vale reached into the cavity and removed the leather packet.
Inside were several documents.
He scanned the first page.
Then frowned.
“What is this?”
Maverick smiled despite the pain.
“Trouble?”
Vale struck him.
Ayasha moved forward.
A rifle blocked her.
Vale opened another page.
His expression changed.
“No.”
He searched faster.
“No.”
“What?” Ayasha demanded.
Vale turned toward them.
“These are copies.”
Maverick began laughing.
Blood touched his lip.
Vale kicked him.
“Where is the original?”
“I don’t know.”
Vale looked at Ayasha.
She looked equally confused.
Then a gunshot exploded outside.
One of Vale’s men fell.
Chaos erupted.
Apache riders entered the courtyard from both sides.
Lobo Negro led them.
Maverick rolled behind a pew as bullets tore through the doorway.
Ayasha grabbed the fallen rifle.
The fight lasted less than two minutes.
Vale escaped through a broken side wall.
Two of his men followed.
The rest surrendered or fell.
Lobo Negro entered the chapel.
Ayasha immediately confronted him.
“You knew we would come here.”
“Yes.”
“You followed us.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know the documents were copies?”
The chief looked at the packet.
“No.”
Maverick struggled upright.
“Then the original is somewhere else.”
Lobo nodded.
Ayasha stared at him.
“Where is my mother?”
The old man closed his eyes.
When he opened them, they were full of grief.
“I don’t know.”
Vale returned sooner than expected.
Not with twenty riders.
With sixty.
And a territorial marshal.
The marshal carried an order declaring the valley under disputed jurisdiction until ownership could be determined.
Everyone living east of the river had seven days to vacate.
Maverick read the order twice.
“This is theft.”
The marshal avoided his eyes.
“It’s law.”
“No. It’s paper.”
“Sometimes they’re the same.”
Vale stood smiling behind him.
Maverick nearly shot him.
Ayasha stopped him.
Again.
That night the valley gathered around the central fire.
Some wanted to fight.
Others wanted to move women and children north.
Lobo Negro listened.
Finally he turned toward Maverick.
“What would you do?”
Maverick looked around.
Months earlier, these people had been strangers.
Now he knew their names.
Their children.
Their jokes.
Their tempers.
Their dead.
He looked toward the river.
“I spent my entire life believing land belonged to whoever had his name written on a deed.”
He held up Vale’s order.
“But paper can lie.”
He threw it into the fire.
“We stay.”
The gathered people murmured.
Maverick continued.
“Not because some office says the valley belongs to me.”
He looked at Ayasha.
“Because it belongs to the people who built lives here.”
Lobo Negro smiled.
Ayasha stared at Maverick with something deeper than affection.
Trust.
Vale attacked before dawn.
Riders came from the south.
Maverick had expected them.
Barricades blocked the narrow crossings.
Apache marksmen waited among the rocks.
Women and children sheltered north of the river.
Shots echoed across the valley.
Bramble screamed beneath Maverick when a bullet struck the saddle.
He fell, rolled, fired.
Smoke covered the southern bank.
Lobo Negro rode through it like a man half his age.
Ayasha fired from behind an irrigation wall.
Vale’s men pushed forward.
Then the marshal shouted for everyone to stop.
A rider had arrived from Tucson carrying a federal injunction.
The attack ended almost as abruptly as it began.
Maverick stood bleeding from the shoulder.
Vale stared at the new papers.
His face changed.
A hearing had been ordered.
Twenty days.
Territorial court.
All claimants required to appear.
Vale looked toward Maverick.
“Bring whatever ghosts you have left.”
Maverick smiled.
“Planning to.”
They had no original deed.
Only copies.
Nathan’s journal.
Elena’s compass.
The old claim.
And testimony from Lobo Negro.
It might not be enough.
Three nights before they departed for Tucson, Maverick could not sleep.
He sat beside the river.
Ayasha joined him.
“What if we lose?”
“We don’t.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
She sat beside him.
For a while they watched moonlight move across the water.
Then Ayasha said, “When Father offered you the marriage, did you truly accept because of the land?”
Maverick smiled faintly.
“At first?”
“Yes.”
“Mostly.”
She elbowed him.
“Ow.”
“Continue.”
“I wanted the valley.”
“And me?”
“You were terrifying.”
“My face was covered.”
“That made it worse.”
She laughed softly.
Maverick turned toward her.
“Then I heard your name.”
“What changed?”
“You became a person.”
Her smile vanished.
Maverick continued.
“I started wondering what kind of woman had been hidden so long that her own father used cruelty as protection.”
Ayasha looked toward the river.
“And now?”
“Now the valley could vanish tomorrow.”
He took her hand.
“I would still choose you.”
She looked at him.
“Even without the land?”
“Especially without the land.”
Tears filled her eyes.
Maverick kissed her.
It was not their first kiss.
But it was the first that felt like a vow neither law nor ceremony had forced.
The courtroom in Tucson smelled of dust, sweat, and old wood.
Vale arrived with three attorneys.
Maverick arrived with Ayasha, Lobo Negro, Nathan’s journal, and one nervous retired clerk.
The hearing lasted six hours.
Vale’s lawyers attacked everything.
The Alvarez grant was incomplete.
Nathan Cole’s claim was contradictory.
Lobo Negro’s testimony was unreliable because he had an interest in the outcome.
Ayasha’s identity as Elena’s daughter lacked a formal birth record.
Then Vale produced his deed.
Signed by Elena Alvarez.
Transferring the entire valley to Silas Vale.
Ayasha stared at the signature.
“That isn’t hers.”
Vale’s attorney smiled.