-hobybuchanon- Native American Indian Girl Returns File

Tala smiled then—the first real smile he'd seen on her. It was like the sun breaking through storm clouds.

"The spring isn't just water, Hoby. It's the headwater of everything. Three rivers, four aquifers, and every creek that feeds this valley. Tillman thinks he's buying the land. But the land was never his to buy. Or mine. Or yours." She turned back to him. "The spring belongs to the water itself. And the water remembers who tried to poison it." -HobyBuchanon- Native American Indian Girl Returns

"I wrote you letters," Hoby said quietly. "Every month for two years. They all came back 'Addressee Unknown.'" Tala smiled then—the first real smile he'd seen on her

"He's been buying up everything for fifty miles. Land, water rights, even people." Tala's jaw tightened. "But he doesn't know about the old spring. The one where you found me. The one that doesn't show up on any map because my people never mapped it." It's the headwater of everything

"You said you'd come back for me," she said. Her voice held no accusation, only a fact, like the shape of a scar.

Hoby remembered that blizzard. Remembered finding a half-frozen Indian child curled against a warm spring, her dark eyes calm as if she'd known all along someone would come. He'd taken her in, raised her alongside his own sons for four years, until the state had decided a white rancher wasn't fit to raise a Native American girl.