The Waterfall

Madison huffed. “Plato should have sent us with an armed guard.”

Lucy sighed. “Madison, that doesn’t help.”

“You’re scaring me,” J.T. said.

“You two stay here while I go see if we have the right place.” Lucy unfastened her seat belt and climbed out of the car. The air seemed hotter, even drier. The dogs paid no attention to her. She smiled at her nervous son. “See, J.T.? It’s okay.”

He nodded dubiously.

“Relax, Lucy.” The male voice seemed to come from nowhere. “You’ve got the right place.”

J.T. swooped across the back seat and pointed at the cabin. “There! Someone’s on the porch!”

Lucy shot her children a warning look. “Stay here.”

She mounted two flat, creaky, dusty steps onto the unprepossessing porch. An ancient, ratty rope hammock hung from rusted hooks. In it lay a dust-covered man with a once-white cowboy hat pulled down over his face. He wore jeans, a chambray shirt with its sleeves rolled up to the elbows, cowboy boots. All of it was scuffed, worn.

Lucy noted the long legs, the flat stomach, the muscled, tanned forearms and the callused, tanned hands. Sebastian Redwing, she remembered, had always been a very physical man.

The yellow Lab lumbered onto the porch and collapsed under the hammock in a kalumph that seemed to shake the entire cabin.

“Sebastian?”

The man pushed the hat off his face. It, too, was dusty and tanned, and more lined and angular than she remembered. His eyes settled on her. Like everything else, they seemed the color of dust. She remembered they were gray, an unusual, surprisingly soft gray. “Hello, Lucy.”

Her mouth and lips were dry from the long drive, the low western humidity. “Plato sent me.”

“I figured.”

“I’m in Wyoming on business. I have the kids with me. Madison and J.T.”

He said nothing. He didn’t look as if he planned to move from the hammock.

“Mom! J.T.’s bleeding!”

Madison, panicked, leaped out of the car and dragged her brother from the back seat. He cupped his hands under his nose, blood dripping through his fingers.

“Oh, gross,” his sister said, standing back as she thrust a paper napkin at him.

Lucy ran toward them. “Tilt your head back.”

The German shepherd barked at J.T. Sebastian gave a low, barely audible command from his hammock, and the dog backed off.

J.T., struggling not to cry, stumbled up onto the porch. “I bled all over the car.”

Madison was right behind him. “He did, Mom.”

Sebastian materialized at Lucy’s side. She’d forgotten how tall and lean he was, how uneasy she’d always felt around him. Not afraid. Just uneasy. He glanced at J.T. “Kid’s fine. It’s the dry air and the dust.”

Madison gaped at him. Lucy concentrated on her bleeding son. “May we use your sink?”

“Don’t have one. You can get water from the pump out back.” He eyed Madison. “You know how to use an outdoor pump?”

She shook her head.

“Time you learned.” He was calm, his voice quiet if not soothing. “Lucy, you can bring J.T. inside. Madison and I will meet you.”

She shrank back, her eyes widening.

Lucy said, “It’s okay, Madison.”

Sebastian frowned, as if he couldn’t fathom what about him would be a cause for concern—a dusty man in an isolated cabin with three dogs and no running water. He started down the steps. Madison took a breath and followed, glancing back at Lucy and mouthing, “Unabomber.”

Lucy got J.T. inside. The prosaic exterior did not deceive. In addition to no running water, there was no electricity. It was like being catapulted back a century to the frontier.

“It’s just a nosebleed,” J.T. said, stuffing the paper napkin up his nose. “I’m fine.”

Lucy grabbed a ragged dish towel from a hook above a wooden counter. The kitchen. There was oatmeal, cornmeal, coffee, cans of beans, jars of salsa and, incongruously, a jug of pure Vermont maple syrup.

In a few minutes, Madison came through the back door with a pitted aluminum pitcher of water. Lucy dipped in the towel. “I think you’ve stopped bleeding, J.T. Let’s just get you cleaned up, okay?” She glanced at her daughter. “Where’s Sebastian?”

“Out taming wild horses or hunting buffalo, I don’t know. Mom. He doesn’t even have a bathroom.”

“This place is pretty rustic.”

Madison groaned. “Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven. I told you.”

Sebastian walked in from the front porch. “What’s she doing watching R-rated movies? She’s not seventeen.”

“That’s without a parent or parental permission.” Lucy stifled an urge to tell him to mind his own damn business, but since he hadn’t invited her to come out here, she kept her mouth shut. “Madison’s a student of film history. I watched Unforgiven with her because it’s so violent.”

He frowned at her. “I’m not violent.”

Lucy had always considered him a man of controlled violence in a violent profession, but before she could say anything, Madison jumped in. “But you live like Eastwood in that opening scene with his two children—”

“No, I don’t. I don’t have hogs.”

That obviously settled it as far as he was concerned. Lucy shook her head at Madison to keep her from arguing her point. For once, her daughter took the hint.

“How’s J.T.?” Sebastian asked.

“He’s better,” Lucy said. “Thanks for your help.”

J.T. kept the wet towel pressed to his nose. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“Good.” Sebastian didn’t seem particularly worried. “You two kids can go down to the barn and look at the horses while I talk to your mother. Dogs’ll go with you.”

“Come on, J.T.,” Madison said, playing the protective big sister for a change. “The barn can’t be any worse than this place.”