Free Hawk's Way: Callen & Zach by Joan Johnston Page B

pleasure of feeling good about himself—lasted the rest of the day.
    Sam had hired Jimmy Lee because he had seen a lot of himself in the boy. Long ago he had eked out enough doing odd jobs for neighboring ranchers to buy his first motorcycle. It was sitting in the barn now. He hadn’t ridden it in years, not since he had hurt his knee his senior year in high school. He had been forced to give it up while his knee mended. Somehow, he seemed to have outgrown it after that. He wondered if it would still run. Maybe when he was on his feet again, he would check it out.
    Meanwhile, Callen only barely managed to deter her mother from coming over to help nurse Sam. “He wouldn’t be comfortable,” she explained. “He feels bad even letting me wait on him, Mom.” It went without saying that going to her parents’ home, even to attend their annual Labor Day picnic, was out of the question until Sam recovered.
    To Callen’s amazement and delight, her brother, Falcon, and his wife, Mara, ignored her warnings against company. They had driven to Hawk’s Way from Falcon’s ranch in Dallas for the Whitelaws’ annual Labor Day picnic, and refused to leave without seeing Callen and Sam. They brought along Charlie One Horse, the ancient, part-Comanche housekeeper who had helped raise two generations of Whitelaws.
    “Charlie!” Callen cried as she grabbed him by his gray braids and pulled him close for a hug. “I’m so glad you came to visit!”
    She brought them all into the bedroom where Sam was propped up and paging through a stock magazine.
    “Sam, I don’t know if you’ve ever met Charlie One Horse. He’s taken care of me since I was in diapers.”
    Sam shook hands and said, “Glad to meet you.”
    Callen was so excited, she barely gave them time to greet each other before she introduced her brother and his wife. “You know Falcon,” she said, “and this is Mara, his wife.”
    “We’ve met,” Sam said with a smile.
    “You have?”
    “Years ago,” Sam said. “It’s nice to see you again, Falcon. I’m sorry I can’t get up, Mara. We weren’t family the last time we met, so I didn’t get a chance to hug you then. And now I’m stuck here in bed.”
    “I can fix that,” Mara said with a twinkle in her eye. She leaned over and gave Sam a quick kiss on the cheek. She laughed at the possessive-jealous-chagrined look on Callen’s face when she had finished.
    “We brought some food from the picnic, since you couldn’t come,” Charlie One Horse said. He began to arrange a huge spread of food on a tray that he set in front of Sam on the bed.
    “We came to celebrate the day with you,” Mara said, “since you couldn’t come to us.”
    “Callen and I will go get the drinks,” Falcon said as he dragged her toward the kitchen. Once they were there, he turned to her and said, “What the hell’s going on, Callen? Mom and Dad said they haven’t seen hide nor hair of you since you got married. I don’t think they believe Sam’s really hurt.”
    “As you can see,” Callen replied in an icy voice, “he is.”
    “That doesn’t explain why the two of you haven’t been to Hawk’s Way to visit since you got married.”
    “You must have heard some of the awful things Daddy and Zach had to say about Sam before the wedding.”
    “So?”
    “So, in time, when things cool off, we’ll go visit.”
    “Why can’t you go now, by yourself?” Falcon demanded.
    “Because I won’t go where my husband isn’t welcome! What if Mom and Daddy hadn’t liked Mara? Or didn’t want to be bothered with Susannah, because she was sick with leukemia? How would you have felt?”
    Susannah was Falcon’s stepdaughter, Mara’s daughter from a previous marriage. Her leukemia had been in remission for four years now. Another year and she would be home free.
    Falcon grimaced. “I see what you mean.”
    “Tell Mom and Daddy you saw me, and I’m fine. And tell them Sam really does have broken ribs.”
    Charlie One Horse, her