miles, etching in skin-blistering, sun-heatedstrands, the outlines of the Nevada atomic testing grounds atFrenchman's Flat.
When the wire first went up, Hetty and her ranching neighbors hadscreamed to high heaven and high congressmen about the loss of the roadand range. The fence stayed up. Now they had gotten used to the ideaand had even grown blase about the frequent nuclear blasts that rattledthe desert floor sixty miles from ground zero.
* * * * *
Barney built a fire under the big, smoke-blackened cauldron Hetty usedfor cooking the hog swill. Dale Hamilton, the county agent, had givenHetty a long talk on the dangers of feeding the pigs, raw, uncooked andpossibly contaminated, garbage. When Hamilton got graphic about whathappened to people who ate pork from such hogs, Hetty turned politelygreen and had Barney set up the cooking cauldron.
After dumping the kitchen slops into the pot, Barney hiked back acrossthe yard to get the two pails of bad milk.
Hetty was sitting at the kitchen table, putting the eggs into plasticrefrigerator dishes when the hog slop exploded in a whooshing roar,followed a split second later by an even louder blast that rocked theranch buildings. The eggs flew across the room as the lid of the slopcauldron came whistling through the kitchen window in a blizzard offlying glass and buried itself, edgewise, in the wall over the stove.Hetty slammed backwards headfirst into a heap of shattered eggs. Atorrent of broken plaster, and crockery fragments rained on her stunnedfigure. Through dazed eyes, she saw a column of purple-reddish firerising from the yard.
A woman who has been thrown twenty-three times from a pitching broncoand kicked five times in the process, doesn't stay dazed long. Pawingdripping egg yokes and plaster from her face, Hetty Thompson struggledto her feet and staggered to the kitchen door.
"Barneeey," she bawled, "you all right?"
The column of weird-colored flame had quickly died and only a fewflickering pieces of wood from the cauldron fire burned in scatteredspots about the yard. Of the cauldron, there wasn't a sign.
"Barney," she cried anxiously, "where are you?"
"Here I am, Miz Thompson." Barney's blackened face peered around thecorner of the tractor shed. "You O.K., Miz Thompson?"
"What in thunderation happened?" Hetty called out. "You try to build afire with dynamite for kindling?"
Shaken but otherwise unharmed, Barney painfully limped over to theranch house porch.
"Don't ask me what happened, m'am," he said. "I just poured that milkinto the slop pot and then put the lid back on and walked off. I heeredthis big '_whoosh_' and turned around in time to see the lid fly offand the kettle begin to tip into the fire and then there was onehelluva blast. It knocked me clean under the tractor shed." He fumbledin his pocket for a cigarette and shakily lighted it.
Hetty peered out over the yard and then looking up, gasped. Perchedlike a rakish derby hat on the arm of the towering pump windmill wasthe slop cauldron. "Well I'll be...." Hetty Thompson said.
"You sure you didn't pour gas on that fire to make it burn faster,Barney Hatfield?" she barked at the handy man.
"No siree," Barney declaimed loudly, "there weren't no gas anywherenear that fire. Only thing I poured out was that there bad milk." Hepaused and scratched his head. "Reckon that funny milk coulda donethat, Miz Thompson? There ain't no gas made what'll blow up nor burn sofunny as that did."
Hetty snorted. "Whoever heard of milk blowing up, you old idiot?" Alook of doubt spread. "You put all that milk in there?"
"No'm, just the one bucket." Barney pointed to the other pail besidethe kitchen door, now half-empty and standing in a pool of liquidsloshed out by the blast wave. Hetty studied the milk pail for a minuteand then resolutely picked it up and walked out into the yard.
"Only one way to find out," she said. "Get me a tin can, Barney."
She poured about two tablespoons of the milk into the bottom of the canwhile Barney collected a small pile of kindling. Removing the milk pailto a safe distance, Hetty lighted the little pile of kindling, set thetin can atop the burning wood and scooted several yards away to joinBarney who had been watching from afar. In less than a minute a booming_whoosh_ sent a miniature column of purple, gaseous flame spoutingfrom the can. "Well whadda you know about that?" Hetty exclaimedwonderingly.
The can had flown off the fire a few feet but didn't explode. Hettywent back to the milk pail and collecting less than a teaspoon full inthe water dipper, walked to the fire. Standing as far back as she couldand still reach over the flames, she carefully sprinkled a few drops ofthe liquid directly into the fire and then jumped back. Miniature ballsof purple flame erupted from the fire before she could move. Pieces offlaming kindling flew in all directions and one slammed Barney acrossthe back of the neck and sent a shower of sparks down his back.
The handy man let out a yowl of pain and leaped for the watering troughbeside the corral, smoke trailing behind him. Hetty thoughtfullysurveyed the scene of her experiment from beneath raised eyebrows. Thenshe grunted with satisfaction, picked up the remaining milk in the pailand went back to the ranch house. Barney climbed drippingly from thehorse trough.
The kitchen was a mess. Splattered eggs were over everything and brokenglass, crockery and plaster covered the floor, table and counters. Onlyone egg remained unbroken. That was the golden egg. Hetty picked it upand shook it. There was a faint sensation of something moving insidethe tough, metallic-looking shell. It shook almost as a normal eggmight, but not quite. Hetty set the strange object on a shelf andturned to the task of cleaning up.
* * * * *
Johnny Culpepper, the ranch's other full-time hand and Hetty'sassistant manager, drove the pickup into the yard just before noon. Heparked in the shade of the huge cottonwood tree beside the house andbounced out with an armload of mail and newspapers. Inside the kitchendoor, he dumped the mail on the sideboard and started to toss his haton a wall hook when he noticed the condition of the room. Hetty wasdishing out fragrant, warmed-over stew into three lunch dishes on thetable. She had cleaned up the worst of the mess and changed into afresh shirt and jeans. Her iron-gray hair was pulled back in astill-damp knot at the back after a hasty scrubbing to get out thegooey mixture of eggs and plaster.
"Holy smoke, Hetty," Johnny said. "What happened here? Your pressurekettle blow up?" His eyes widened when he saw the lid of the slopcauldron still embedded in the wall over the stove. His gaze trackedback and took in the shattered window.
"Had an accident," Hetty said matter-of-factly, putting the last disheson the table. "Tell you about it when we eat. Now you go wash up andcall Barney. I want you to put some new glass in that window thisafternoon and get that danged lid outta the wall."
Curious and puzzled, Johnny washed at the kitchen sink and then walkedto the door to shout for Barney. On the other side of the yard, Barneyreleased the pump windmill clutch. While Johnny watched from the porch,the weight of the heavy slop cauldron slowly turned the big windmilland as the arm adorned by the kettle rotated downward, the cast-ironpot slipped off and fell to the hard-packed ground with a boomingclang.
"Well, for the luvva Pete," Johnny said in amazement. "Hey, Barney,time to eat. C'mon in."
Barney trudged across the yard and limped into the kitchen to wash.They sat down to the table. "Now just what have you two been up to,"Johnny demanded as they attacked the food-laden dishes.
Between mouthfuls, the two older people gave him a rundown on themorning's mishaps. The more Johnny heard, the wilder it sounded. Johnnyhad been a part of the Circle T since he was ten years old. That wasthe year Hetty jerked him out of the hands of a Carson City policemanwho had been in the process of hauling the ragged and dirty youngsterto the station house for swiping a box of cookies from a grocery store.Johnny's mother was dead and his father, once the town's best mechanic,had turned into the town's best drunk.
During the times his father slept one off, either in the shack the manand boy occupied at the edge of town, or in the local
lockup, Johnnyran wild.
Hetty took the boy to the ranch for two reasons. Mainly it was theempty ache in her heart since the death of Big Jim Thompson a yearearlier following a ranch tractor accident that had crushed his chest.The other was her well-hidden disappointment that she had beenchildless. Hetty's bluff, weathered features would never admit toloneliness or heartache. Beneath the surface, all the warmth and loveshe had went out to the scared but belligerent youngster. But she neverlet much affection show through until Johnny had become part of herlife. Johnny's father died the following winter after pneumonia broughton by a night of lying drunk in the cold shack during a blizzard. Itwas accepted without legal formality around the county that Johnnyautomatically