Make Mine Homogenized

: Make Mine Homogenized

Anyone looking for guaranteed sound science will have to look

elsewhere. But if it's fun you want ... try the world's most potent

eggnog!





"Shoo," Hetty Thompson cried, waving her battered old felt hat at the

clucking cluster of hens eddying around her legs as she plowed through

the flock towards the chicken house. "Scat. You, Solomon," she called

out, directing her words at the bobbing comb
f the big rooster

strutting at the edge of the mob. "Don't just stand there like a

satisfied cowhand after a night in Reno. Get these noisy females outta

my way." She batted at the hens and they scattered with angry squawks

of protest.



Hetty paused in the doorway of the chicken house to allow her eyes to

become accustomed to the cool gloom after the bright glare of the ranch

yard. She could feel the first trickles of sweat forming under the

man's shirt she was wearing as the hot, early morning Nevada sun beat

down on her back in the doorway.



Moving carefully but quickly through the nests, she reached and groped

for the eggs she knew would be found in the scattered straw. As she

placed each find carefully in the bucket she carried, her lips moved in

a soundless count. When she had finished, she straightened up and left

the chicken house, her face reflecting minor irritation.



Again the hens swirled about her, hoping for the handfuls of cracked

corn she usually tossed to them. On the other side of the yard Solomon

stepped majestically along the edge of the vegetable garden, never

crossing the hoed line separating garden from yard.



"You'd better stay over there, you no-account Lothario," Hetty growled.

"Five eggs short this morning and all you do is act like you were just

the business agent for this bunch of fugitives from a dumpling pot."

Solomon cocked his head and stared Hetty down. She paused at the foot

of the backporch steps and threw the rooster a final remark. "You don't

do any better than this you're liable to wind up in that pot yourself."

Solomon gave a scornful cluck. "Better still, I'll get me a young

rooster in here and take over your job." Solomon let out a squawk and

took out at a dead run, herding three hens before him towards the

chicken house.



With a satisfied smile of triumph, Hetty climbed the steps and crossed

to the kitchen door. She turned and looked back across the yard towards

the barn and corrals.



"Barneeeeey," Hetty yelled. "Ain't you finished with that milking yet?"



"Comin' now, Miz Thompson," came the reply from the barn. Hetty let the

screen door slam behind her as she walked into the kitchen and placed

the bucket of eggs on the big work table. She had her arm up to wipe

her moist forehead on the sleeve of her shirt when she spotted the

golden egg lying in the middle of the others in the galvanized bucket.



She froze in the arm-lifted position for several seconds, staring at

the dully glowing egg. Then she slowly reached out and picked it up. It

was slightly heavier than a regular egg, but for the dull, gold-bronze

metallic appearance of the shell, looked just like any of the other

twenty-odd eggs in the bucket. She was still holding it in the palm of

her hand when the kitchen door again slammed and the handy man limped

into the room. He carried two pails of milk across the kitchen and set

them down near the sink.



"Whatcha lookin' at, Miz Thompson?" Barney Hatfield asked.



Hetty frowned at the egg in her hand without answering. Barney limped

around the side of the table for a closer look. Sunlight streaming

through the kitchen windows glinted on the shell of the odd egg.

Barney's eyes grew round. "Now ain't that something," he whispered in

awe.



Hetty started as though someone had snapped their fingers in front of

her staring eyes. Her normal look of practical dubiousness returned.



"Huh," she snorted. "Even had me fooled for a second. Something wrong

with this egg but it sure is shootin' ain't gold. One of them fool hens

must of been pecking in the fertilizer storeroom and got herself an

overdose of some of them minerals in that stuff.



"What are you staring at, you old fool," she glared at Barney. "It

ain't gold." Hetty laid the egg at one side of the table. She walked to

the sink and took a clean, two-gallon milk can from the drainboard and

set it in the sink to fill it from the pails of rich, frothy milk

Barney had brought in the pails.



"Sally come fresh this morning, Miz Thompson," he said. "Got herself a

real fine little bull calf."



Hetty looked at the two pails of milk. "Well, where's the rest of the

milk, then?"



"That's Queenie's milk," Barney said. "Sally's is still out on the

porch."



"Well bring it in before the sun clabbers it."



"Can't," Barney said.



Hetty swung around and glared at him. "What do you mean, you can't? You

suddenly come down with the glanders?"



"No'm, it's just that Sally's milk ain't no good," he replied.



* * * * *



A frown spread over Hetty's face as she hoisted one of the milk pails

and began pouring into the can in the sink. "What's wrong with it,

Barney? Sally seem sick or something?" she asked.



Barney scratched his head. "I don't rightly know, Miz Thompson. That

milk looks all right, or at least, almost all right. It's kinda thin

and don't have no foam like you'd expect milk to have. But mostly, it

sure don't smell right and it danged well don't taste right.



"Phooey." He made a face at the memory of the taste. "I stuck my

finger in it when it looked kinda queer, and took a taste. It shore

tasted lousy."



"You probably been currying that mangey old horse of yours before you

went to milking," Hetty snorted, "and tasted his cancerous old hide on

your fingers. I've told you for the last time to wash your hands before

you go to milking them cows. I didn't pay no eighteen hundred dollars

for that prize, registered Guernsey just to have you give her bag fever

with your dirty hands."



"That ain't so, Miz Thompson," Barney cried indignantly. "I did too,

wash my hands. Good, too. I wuzn't near my horse this morning. That

milk just weren't no good."



Hetty finished pouring the milk into the cans and after putting the

cans in the refrigerator, wiped her hands on her jeans and went out

onto the porch, Barney trailing behind her. She bent over and sniffed

at the two milk pails setting beside the door. "Whew," she

exclaimed, "it sure does smell funny. Hand me that dipper, Barney."



Barney reached for a dipper hanging on a nail beside the kitchen door.

Hetty dipped out a small quantity of the milk, sipped, straightened up

with a jerk and spewed the milk out into the yard. "Yaawwwk," she

spluttered, "that tastes worse 'n Diesel oil."



She stirred distastefully at the swirling, flat-looking liquid in the

pails and then turned back to the kitchen. "I never saw the like of

it," she exclaimed. "Chickens come out with some kind of sorry-looking

egg and now, in the same morning, an eighteen hundred dollar

registered, fresh Guernsey gives out hogwash instead of milk." She

stared thoughtfully across the yard at the distant mountains, now

shimmering in the hot, midmorning sun. "Guess we could swill the hogs

with that milk, rather'n throw it out, Barney. I never seen anything

them Durocs wouldn't eat. When you get ready to put the other swill in

the cooker, toss that milk in with it and cook it up for the hogs."



Hetty went back into her kitchen and Barney turned and limped across

the yard to the tractor shed. He pulled the brim of his sweat-stained

Stetson over his eyes and squinted south over the heat-dancing sage and

sparse grasslands of Circle T range. Dust devils were pirouetting in

the hazy distance towards the mountains forming a corridor leading to

the ranch. A dirt road led out of the yard and crossed an oiled county

road about five miles south of the ranch. The county road was now the

only link the Circle T had to the cattle shipping pens at Carson City.

The dirt road arrowed south across the range but fifteen miles from the

ranch, a six-strand, new, barbed-wire fence cut the road. A white metal

sign with raised letters proclaimed "Road Closed. U.S. Government

Military Reservation. Restricted Area. Danger--Peligre. Keep Out."



The taut bands of wire stretched east and west of the road for more

than twenty miles in each direction, with duplicates of the metal sign

hung on the fence every five hundred yards. Then the wires turned south

for nearly a hundred miles, etching in skin-blistering, sun-heated

strands, the outlines of the Nevada atomic testing grounds at

Frenchman's Flat.



When the wire first went up, Hetty and her ranching neighbors had

screamed to high heaven and high congressmen about the loss of the road

and range. The fence stayed up. Now they had gotten used to the idea

and had even grown blase about the frequent nuclear blasts that rattled

the desert floor sixty miles from ground zero.



* * * * *



Barney built a fire under the big, smoke-blackened cauldron Hetty used

for cooking the hog swill. Dale Hamilton, the county agent, had given

Hetty a long talk on the dangers of feeding the pigs, raw, uncooked and

possibly contaminated, garbage. When Hamilton got graphic about what

happened to people who ate pork from such hogs, Hetty turned politely

green and had Barney set up the cooking cauldron.



After dumping the kitchen slops into the pot, Barney hiked back across

the yard to get the two pails of bad milk.



Hetty was sitting at the kitchen table, putting the eggs into plastic

refrigerator dishes when the hog slop exploded in a whooshing roar,

followed a split second later by an even louder blast that rocked the

ranch buildings. The eggs flew across the room as the lid of the slop

cauldron came whistling through the kitchen window in a blizzard of

flying glass and buried itself, edgewise, in the wall over the stove.

Hetty slammed backwards headfirst into a heap of shattered eggs. A

torrent of broken plaster, and crockery fragments rained on her stunned

figure. Through dazed eyes, she saw a column of purple-reddish fire

rising from the yard.



A woman who has been thrown twenty-three times from a pitching bronco

and kicked five times in the process, doesn't stay dazed long. Pawing

dripping egg yokes and plaster from her face, Hetty Thompson struggled

to 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 few

flickering pieces of wood from the cauldron fire burned in scattered

spots 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 the

corner of the tractor shed. "You O.K., Miz Thompson?"



"What in thunderation happened?" Hetty called out. "You try to build a

fire with dynamite for kindling?"



Shaken but otherwise unharmed, Barney painfully limped over to the

ranch house porch.



"Don't ask me what happened, m'am," he said. "I just poured that milk

into the slop pot and then put the lid back on and walked off. I heered

this big 'whoosh' and turned around in time to see the lid fly off

and the kettle begin to tip into the fire and then there was one

helluva blast. It knocked me clean under the tractor shed." He fumbled

in his pocket for a cigarette and shakily lighted it.



Hetty peered out over the yard and then looking up, gasped. Perched

like a rakish derby hat on the arm of the towering pump windmill was

the 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 anywhere

near that fire. Only thing I poured out was that there bad milk." He

paused and scratched his head. "Reckon that funny milk coulda done

that, Miz Thompson? There ain't no gas made what'll blow up nor burn so

funny as that did."



Hetty snorted. "Whoever heard of milk blowing up, you old idiot?" A

look of doubt spread. "You put all that milk in there?"



"No'm, just the one bucket." Barney pointed to the other pail beside

the kitchen door, now half-empty and standing in a pool of liquid

sloshed out by the blast wave. Hetty studied the milk pail for a minute

and 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 can

while Barney collected a small pile of kindling. Removing the milk pail

to a safe distance, Hetty lighted the little pile of kindling, set the

tin can atop the burning wood and scooted several yards away to join

Barney who had been watching from afar. In less than a minute a booming

whoosh sent a miniature column of purple, gaseous flame spouting

from the can. "Well whadda you know about that?" Hetty exclaimed

wonderingly.



The can had flown off the fire a few feet but didn't explode. Hetty

went back to the milk pail and collecting less than a teaspoon full in

the water dipper, walked to the fire. Standing as far back as she could

and still reach over the flames, she carefully sprinkled a few drops of

the liquid directly into the fire and then jumped back. Miniature balls

of purple flame erupted from the fire before she could move. Pieces of

flaming kindling flew in all directions and one slammed Barney across

the 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 trough

beside the corral, smoke trailing behind him. Hetty thoughtfully

surveyed the scene of her experiment from beneath raised eyebrows. Then

she grunted with satisfaction, picked up the remaining milk in the pail

and went back to the ranch house. Barney climbed drippingly from the

horse trough.



The kitchen was a mess. Splattered eggs were over everything and broken

glass, crockery and plaster covered the floor, table and counters. Only

one egg remained unbroken. That was the golden egg. Hetty picked it up

and shook it. There was a faint sensation of something moving inside

the tough, metallic-looking shell. It shook almost as a normal egg

might, but not quite. Hetty set the strange object on a shelf and

turned to the task of cleaning up.



* * * * *



Johnny Culpepper, the ranch's other full-time hand and Hetty's

assistant manager, drove the pickup into the yard just before noon. He

parked in the shade of the huge cottonwood tree beside the house and

bounced out with an armload of mail and newspapers. Inside the kitchen

door, he dumped the mail on the sideboard and started to toss his hat

on a wall hook when he noticed the condition of the room. Hetty was

dishing out fragrant, warmed-over stew into three lunch dishes on the

table. She had cleaned up the worst of the mess and changed into a

fresh shirt and jeans. Her iron-gray hair was pulled back in a

still-damp knot at the back after a hasty scrubbing to get out the

gooey mixture of eggs and plaster.



"Holy smoke, Hetty," Johnny said. "What happened here? Your pressure

kettle blow up?" His eyes widened when he saw the lid of the slop

cauldron still embedded in the wall over the stove. His gaze tracked

back and took in the shattered window.



"Had an accident," Hetty said matter-of-factly, putting the last dishes

on the table. "Tell you about it when we eat. Now you go wash up and

call Barney. I want you to put some new glass in that window this

afternoon and get that danged lid outta the wall."



Curious and puzzled, Johnny washed at the kitchen sink and then walked

to the door to shout for Barney. On the other side of the yard, Barney

released the pump windmill clutch. While Johnny watched from the porch,

the weight of the heavy slop cauldron slowly turned the big windmill

and as the arm adorned by the kettle rotated downward, the cast-iron

pot slipped off and fell to the hard-packed ground with a booming

clang.



"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 the

morning's mishaps. The more Johnny heard, the wilder it sounded. Johnny

had been a part of the Circle T since he was ten years old. That was

the year Hetty jerked him out of the hands of a Carson City policeman

who had been in the process of hauling the ragged and dirty youngster

to 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 man

and boy occupied at the edge of town, or in the local lockup, Johnny

ran wild.



Hetty took the boy to the ranch for two reasons. Mainly it was the

empty ache in her heart since the death of Big Jim Thompson a year

earlier following a ranch tractor accident that had crushed his chest.

The other was her well-hidden disappointment that she had been

childless. Hetty's bluff, weathered features would never admit to

loneliness or heartache. Beneath the surface, all the warmth and love

she had went out to the scared but belligerent youngster. But she never

let much affection show through until Johnny had become part of her

life. Johnny's father died the following winter after pneumonia brought

on by a night of lying drunk in the cold shack during a blizzard. It

was accepted without legal formality around the county that Johnny

automatically became Hetty's boy.



She cuffed and comforted him into a gawky-happy adolescence, pushed him

through high school and then, at eighteen, sent him off to the

University of California at Davis to learn what the pundits of the

United States Department of Agriculture had to say about animal

husbandry and ranch management.



* * * * *



When Hetty and Barney had finished their recitation, Johnny wore a look

of frank disbelief. "If I didn't know you two better, I'd say you both

been belting the bourbon bottle while I was gone. But this I've got to

see."



They finished lunch and, after Hetty stacked the dishes in the sink,

trooped out to the porch where Johnny went through the same examination

of the milk. Again, a little fire was built in the open safety of the

yard and a few drops of the liquid used to produce the same

technicolored, combustive effects.



"Well, what do you know," Johnny exclaimed, "a four hundred octane

Guernsey cow!"



Johnny kicked out the fire and carried the milk pail to the tractor

shed. He parked the milk on a workbench and gathered up an armful of

tools to repair the blast-torn kitchen. He started to leave but when

the milk bucket caught his eye, he unloaded the tools and fished around

under the workbench for an empty five-gallon gasoline can. He poured

the remaining milk into the closed gasoline can and replaced the cap.

Then he took his tools and a pane of glass from an overhead rack and

headed for the house.



Hetty came into the kitchen as he was prying at the cauldron lid in the

wall.



"You're going to make a worse mess before you're through," she said,

"so I'll just let you finish and then clean up the whole mess

afterwards. I got other things to do anyway."



She jammed a man's old felt hat on her head and left the house. Barney

was unloading the last of the supplies Johnny had brought from Carson

in the truck. Hetty shielded her eyes against the metallic glare of the

afternoon sun. "Gettin' pretty dry, Barney. Throw some salt blocks in

the pickup and I'll run them down to the south pasture and see if the

pumps need to be turned on.



"And you might get that wind pump going in case we get a little breeze

later this afternoon. But in any case, better run the yard pump for an

hour or so and get some water up into the tank. I'll be back as soon as

I take a ride through the pasture. I want to see how that Angus

yearling is coming that I picked out for house beef."



A few minutes later, Hetty in the pickup disappeared behind a hot swirl

of yellow dust. Barney ambled to the cool pump house beneath the

towering windmill. An electric motor, powered either from the REA line

or from direct current stored in a bank of wet cell batteries, bulked

large in the small shed. To the left, a small, gasoline-driven

generator supplied standby power if no wind was blowing to turn the

arm-driven generator or if the lines happened to be down, as was often

the case in the winter.



Barney threw the switch to start the pump motor. Nothing happened. He

reached for the light switch to test the single bulb hanging from a

cord to the ceiling. Same nothing. Muttering darkly to himself, he

changed the pump engine leads to DC current and closed the switch to

the battery bank. The engine squeaked and whined slowly but when Barney

threw in the clutch to drive the pump, it stopped and just hummed

faintly. Then he opened the AC fuse box.



Johnny had freed the cauldron lid and was knocking out bits of broken

glass from the kitchen window frame before putting in the new glass

when Barney limped into the room.



"That pot busted the pump house 'lectric line, Johnny, when it went

sailing," he said. "Miz Thompson wants to pump up some water and on top

of that, the batteries are down. You got time to fix the line?"



Johnny paused and surveyed the kitchen. "I'm going to be working here

for another hour anyway so Hetty can clean up when she gets back. Why

don't you fire up the gasoline kicker for now and I'll fix the line

when I get through here," he said.



"O.K.," Barney nodded and turned to leave. "Oh, forgot to ask you. Miz

Thompson tell you about the egg?"



"What egg?" Johnny asked.



"The gold one."



Johnny grinned. "Sure, and I saw the goose when I came in. And you're

Jack and the windmill is your beanstalk. Go climb it, Barney and cut

out the fairy tales."



"Naw, Johnny," Barney protested, "I ain't kidding. Miz Thompson got a

gold egg from the hens this morning. At least, it looks kinda like gold

but she says it ain't. See, here it is." He reached into the cupboard

where Hetty had placed the odd egg. He walked over and handed it to

Johnny who was sitting on the sink drain counter to work on the

shattered window.



The younger man turned the egg over in his hand. "It sure feels funny.

Wonder what the inside looks like?" He banged the egg gently against

the edge of the drain board. When it didn't crack, he slammed it

harder, but then realizing that if it did break suddenly, it would

squish onto the floor, he put the egg on the counter and tapped it with

his hammer.



The shell split and a clear liquid poured out on to the drain board,

thin and clear, not glutenous like a normal egg white. A small, reddish

ball, obviously the yolk, rolled across the board, fell into the sink

and broke into powdery fragments. A faint etherlike odor arose from the

mess.



"I guess Miz Thompson was right," Barney said. "She said that hen musta

been pecking in the fertilizer chemicals. Never seen no egg like that

before."



"Yeh," Johnny said puzzledly. "Well, so much for that." He tossed the

golden shell to one side and turned back to his glass work. Barney left

for the pumphouse.



Inside the pumphouse, Barney opened the gasoline engine tank and poked

a stick down to test the fuel level. The stick came out almost dry.

With another string of mutterings, he limped across the yard to the

tractor shed for a gas can. Back in the pumphouse, he poured the engine

tank full, set the gas can aside and then, after priming the

carburetor, yanked on the starter pull rope. The engine caught with a

spluttering roar and began racing madly. Barney lunged for the throttle

and cut it back to idle, but even then, the engine was running at near

full speed. Then Barney noticed the white fluid running down the side

of the engine tank and dripping from the spout of the gasoline can. He

grinned broadly, cut in the pump clutch and hurriedly limped across the

yard to the kitchen.



"Hey, Johnny," he called, "did you put that milk o' Sally's into a gas

can?"



Johnny leaned through the open kitchen window. "Yeh, why?"



"Well, I just filled the kicker with it by accident, and man, you orter

hear that engine run," Barney exclaimed. "Come see."



Johnny swung his legs through the window and dropped lightly to the

yard. The two men were halfway across the yard from the pumphouse when

a loud explosion ripped the building. Parts of the pump engine flew

through the thin walls like shrapnel. A billowing cloud of purple smoke

welled out of the ruptured building as Johnny and Barney flattened

themselves against the hot, packed earth. Flames licked up from the

pump shed. The men ran for the horse trough and grabbing pails of

water, raced for the pumphouse. The fire had just started into the

wooden walls of the building and a few splashes of water doused the

flames.



They eyed the ruins of the gasoline engine. "Holy cow," Johnny

exclaimed, "that stuff blew the engine right apart." He gazed up at the

holes in the pumphouse roof. "Blew the cylinders and head right out the

roof. Holy cow!"



Barney was pawing at the pump and electric motor. "Didn't seem to hurt

the pump none. Guess we better get that 'lectric line fixed though, now

that we ain't got no more gas engine."



The two men went to work on the pump motor. The broken line outside the

building was spliced and twenty minutes later, Johnny threw the AC

switch. The big, electric motor spun into action and settled into a

workmanlike hum. The overhead light dimmed briefly when the pump load

was thrown on and then the slip-slap sound of the pump filled the shed.

They watched and listened for a couple of minutes. Assured that the

pump was working satisfactorily, they left the wrecked pumphouse.



Johnny was carrying the gasoline can of milk. "Good thing you set this

off to one side where it didn't get hit and go off," he said. "The way

this stuff reacts, we'd be without a pump, engine, or windmill if it

had.



"Barney, be a good guy and finish putting in that glass for me will

you? I've got the frame all ready to putty. I've got me some fiddlin'

and figurin' to do."



Johnny angled off to the tractor and tool shed and disappeared inside.

Barney limped into the kitchen and went to work on the window glass.

From the tractor shed came the sounds of an engine spluttering, racing,

backfiring and then, just idling.



When Hetty drove back into the ranch yard an hour or so later, Johnny

was rodeoing the farm tractor around the yard like a teen-ager, his

face split in a wide grin. She parked the truck under the tree as

Johnny drove the tractor alongside and gunned the engine, still

grinning.



"What in tarnation is this all about?" Hetty asked as she climbed down

from the pickup.



"Know what this tractor's running on?" Johnny shouted over the noise of

the engine.



"Of course I do, you young idiot," she exclaimed. "It's gasoline."



"Wrong," Johnny yelled triumphantly. "It's running on Sally's milk!"



* * * * *



The next morning, Johnny had mixed up two hundred gallons of Sally's

Fuel and had the pickup, tractor, cattle truck and his 1958 Ford and

Hetty's '59 Chevrolet station wagon all purring on the mixture.



Mixing it was a simple process after he experimented and found the

right proportions. One quart of pure Sally's milk to one hundred

gallons of water. He had used the two remaining quarts in the gasoline

can to make the mixture but by morning, Sally had graced the ranch with

five more gallons of the pure concentrate. Johnny carefully stored the

concentrated milk in a scoured fifty-five gallon gasoline drum in the

tool shed.



"We've hit a gold mine," he told Hetty exultantly. "We're never going

to have to buy gasoline again. On top of that, at the rate Sally's

turning this stuff out, we can start selling it in a couple of weeks

and make a fortune."



That same morning, Hetty collected three more of the golden eggs.



"Set 'em on the shelf," Johnny said, "and when we go into town next

time I'll have Dale look at them and maybe tell us what those hens have

been into. I'll probably go into town again Saturday for the mail."



But when Saturday came, Johnny was hobbling around the ranch on a

wrenched ankle, suffered when his horse stumbled in a gopher hole and

tossed him.



"You stay off that leg," Hetty ordered. "I'll go into town for the

mail. Them girls can just struggle along without your romancing this

week." Johnny made a wry face but obeyed orders.



"Barneeey," Hetty bawled, "bring me a quarter of beef outta the

cooler." Barney stuck his head out of the barn and nodded. "I been

promising some good beef to Judge Hatcher for a month of Sundays now,"

Hetty said to Johnny.



"If you're going to stop by the courthouse, how about taking those

crazy eggs of yours into the county agent's office and leave them there

for analysis," Johnny suggested. He hobbled into the kitchen to get the

golden eggs.



Barney arrived with the chilled quarter of beef wrapped in burlap. He

tossed it in the bed of the pickup and threw more sacks over it to keep

it cool under the broiling, midmorning sun. Johnny came out with the

eggs in a light cardboard box stuffed with crumpled newspapers. He

wedged the box against the side of beef in the forward corner of the

truck bed. "One more thing, Hetty," he said. "I've got a half drum of

drain oil in the tractor shed that I've been meaning to trade in for

some gearbox lube that Willy Simons said he'd let me have. Can you drop

it off at his station and pick up the grease?"



"Throw it on," Hetty said, "while I go change into some town clothes."



Johnny started to hobble down the porch steps when Barney stopped him.

"I'll get it boy, you stay off that ankle." Barney climbed into the

pickup and drove it around to the tractor shed. He spotted two oil

drums in the gloomy shed. He tilted the nearest one and felt liquid

slosh near the halfway mark, then rolled it out the door. Barney heaved

it into the truck bed, stood it on end against the cab and drove the

pickup back to the ranch house door as Hetty came out wearing clean

jeans and a bright, flowered blouse. Her gray hair was tucked in a neat

bun beneath a blocked Stetson hat.



She climbed into the truck, waved to the two men and drove out the

yard. As she bumped over the cattle guard at the gate, the wooden plug

that Johnny had jury-rigged to cork the gasoline drum with its

twenty-gallon load of pure Sally's milk, bounced out.



A small geyser of white fluid shot out of the drum as she hit another

bump and then the pickup went jolting down the ranch road, little

splashes of Sally's milk sloshing out with each bump and forming a pool

on the bottom of the truck. When Hetty cowboyed onto the county road,

the drum tipped dangerously and then bounced back onto its base. This

time a fountain of milk geysered out and splashed heavily into the box

of golden eggs. Hetty drove on.



But not for long.



With a ranch woman's disregard for watching the road, Hetty constantly

scanned the nearby range lands where small bands of her cherished black

Angus grazed. She prided herself on the fact that despite her sixty

years, her eyes were still sharp enough to spot a worm-ridden cow at a

thousand yards.



Two miles after she turned onto the county road, which ran through

Circle T range land, her roving gaze took in a cow and calf on a

hillside a few hundred yards south of the road. Hetty slowed the pickup

to fifty miles an hour and squinted into the sun. She grunted with

satisfaction and slammed on the brakes. The truck swerved and skidded

to a halt at the left side of the deserted road. Hetty leaped from the

truck and began a fast walk up the hillside for a closer look at the

cow and calf.



She never heard the dull thump of the milk drum tipping onto the edge

of the truck bed. Hetty topped the hill and walked slowly towards the

cow and calf that were now edging away from her. As she eased down the

far side of the hill out of sight of the pickup, a steady stream of

Sally's milk was engulfing the box of golden eggs. A minute later, the

reduced contents caused the drum to shift and slip. It fell onto the

eggs, cracking a half dozen.



* * * * *



The earth split open and the world around Hetty erupted in a roaring

inferno of purple-red fire and ear-shattering sound. The rolling

concussion swept Hetty from her feet and tumbled her into a drywash

gully at the base of the hill. The gully saved her life as the

sky-splitting shock wave rolled over her. Stunned and deafened, she

flattened herself under a slight overhang.



The rolling blast rocked ranches and towns for more than one hundred

miles and the ground wave triggered the seismographs at the University

of California nearly two hundred miles away and at UCLA, four hundred

miles distant. Tracking and testing instruments went wild along the

entire length of the AEC atomic test grounds, a mere sixty miles south

of the smoking, gaping hole that marked the end of the Circle T pickup

truck.



In a direct line, the ranch house was about eight miles from the

explosion.



Johnny was lounging in Hetty's favorite rocking chair on the wide back

verandah, lighting a cigarette and Barney was perched on the porch

railing when the sky was blotted out by the dazzling violet light of

the blast. They were blinking in frozen amazement when the shock wave

smashed into the ranch, flattening the flimsier buildings and buckling

the side and roof of the steel-braced barn. Every window on the place

blew out in a storm of deadly glass shards. The rolling ground wave in

the wake of the shock blast, rocked and bounced the solid, timber and

adobe main house.



The concussion hit Johnny like a fist, pinwheeling him backwards in the

rocker against the wall of the house. It caught Barney like a sack of

sodden rags and flung him atop the dazed and semiconscious younger man.



The first frightened screams of the horses in the barns and corrals

were mingling with the bawling of the heifers in the calf pens when the

sound of the explosion caught up with the devastation of the shock and

ground waves.



Like the reverberation of a thousand massed cannon firing at once, the

soul-searing sound rumbled out of the desert and boiled with almost

tangible density into the shattered ranch yard. It flattened the

feebly-stirring men on the porch and then thundered on in a tidal wave

of noise.



Barney moaned and rolled off the tangle of porch rocker and stunned

youth beneath him. Johnny lay dazed another second or two and then

began struggling to his feet.



"Hetty," he croaked, pointing wildly to the south where a massive,

dirty column of purple smoke and fire rose skyward like the stem of a

monstrous and malignant toadstool. "Hetty's out there."



He stumbled from the porch and broke into a staggering run to the pile

of broken planks that seconds ago had been the tractor shed. As he

crossed the yard, a great gust of wind whipped back from the north,

pumping clouds of dry, dusty earth before it. The force of the wind

almost knocked the bruised and shaken Johnny from his feet once again

as it swept back over the ranch, in the direction of the great pillar

of purple smoke.



"Implosion," Johnny's mind registered.



He tore at the stack of loose boards leaning against the station wagon,

flinging them fiercely aside in his frantic efforts to free the

vehicle. Barney limped up to join him and a minute later they had

cleared a way into the wagon. Johnny squeezed into the front seat and

drove it back from under more leaning boards. Three of the side windows

were smashed but the windshield was intact except for a small, starred

crack in the safety glass. Clear of the debris, Barney opened the

opposite door and slid in beside Johnny. Dirt spun from beneath the

wheels of the car as he slammed his foot to the floor and raced towards

the smoke column that now towered more than a mile and a half into the

air.



Beneath her protective overhang, Hetty stirred and moaned feebly. Twin

rivulets of dark blood trickled from her nostrils. Thick dust was

settling on the area and she coughed and gasped for breath.



On the opposite side of the hill, a vast, torn crater, nearly a hundred

feet across and six to ten feet deep, smoked like a stirring volcano

and gave off a strange, pungent odor of ether.



* * * * *



Johnny Culpepper's dramatic charge to the rescue was no more dramatic

than the reaction in a dozen other places in Nevada and California.

Particularly sixty miles south where a small army of military and

scientific men were preparing for an atomic underground shot when the

Circle T pickup vanished.



The shock wave rippled across the desert floor, flowed around the

mountains and tunneled into Frenchman's Flat, setting off every

shock-measuring instrument. Then came the ground wave, rolling through

the earth like a gopher through a garden. Ditto for ground-wave

measuring devices. Lastly, the sound boomed onto the startled

scientists and soldiers like the pounding of great timpani under the

vaulted dome of the burning sky.



On mountain top observation posts, technicians turned unbelieving eyes

north to the burgeoning pillar of smoke and dust, then yelped and swung

optical and electronic instruments to bear on the fantastic column.



In less than fifteen minutes, the test under preparation had been

canceled, all equipment secured and the first assault waves of

scientists, soldiers, intelligence and security men were racing north

behind white-suited and sealed radiation detection teams cradling

Geiger counters in their arms like submachine guns. Telephone lines

were jammed with calls from Atomic Energy Commission field officials

reporting the phenomena to Washington and calling for aid from West

Coast and New Mexico AEC bases. Jet fighters at Nellis Air Force base

near Las Vegas, were scrambled and roared north over the ground

vehicles to report visual conditions near the purple pillar of power.



The Associated Press office in San Francisco had just received word of

the quake recorded by the seismograph at Berkeley when a staffer on the

other side of the desk answered a call from the AP stringer in Carson

City, reporting the blast and mighty cloud in the desert sky. One fast

look at the map showed that the explosion was well north of the AEC

testing ground limits. The Carson City stringer was ordered to get out

to the scene on the double and hold the fort while reinforcements of

staffers and photographers were flown from 'Frisco.



Before any of the official or civil agencies had swung into action, the

Circle T station wagon had rocketed off the ranch road and turned onto

the oiled, county highway leading both to Carson City--and the

now-expanding but less dense column of smoke.



Johnny hunched over the wheel and peered through the thickening pall of

smoke and dust, reluctant to ease off his breakneck speed but knowing

that they had to find Hetty--if she were alive. Neither man had said a

word since the wagon raced from the ranch yard.



* * * * *



There was no valid reason to associate the explosion with Hetty, yet

instinctively and naggingly, Johnny knew that somehow Hetty was

involved. Barney, still ignorant of his error of the oil drums, just

clung to his seat and prayed for the best.



The dust was almost too thick to see, forcing Johnny to slow the

station wagon as they penetrated deeper into the base of the smoke

column. Hiding under his frantic concern for Hetty was the half-formed

thought that the whole thing was an atomic explosion and that he and

Barney were heading into sure radiation deaths. His logic nudged at the

thought and said, "If it were atomic, you started dying back on the

porch, so might as well play the hand out."



A puff of wind swirled the dust up away from the road as the station

wagon came up to the smoking crater. Johnny slammed on the brakes and

he and Barney jumped from the car to stand, awe-struck, at the edge of

the hole.



The dust-deadened air muffled Johnny's sobbing exclamation:



"Dear God!"



They walked slowly around the ragged edges of the crater. Barney bent

down and picked a tiny metallic fragment from the pavement. He stared

at it and then tapped Johnny on the arm and handed it to him,

wordlessly. It was a twisted piece of body steel, bright at its torn

edges and coated with the scarlet enamel that had been the color of the

Circle T pickup.



Johnny's eyes filled with tears and he shoved the little scrap of metal

in his pocket. "Let's see what else we can find, Barney." The two men

began working a slow search of the area in ever-widening circles from

the crater that led them finally up and over the top of the little hill

to the south of the road.



Fifteen minutes later they found Hetty and ten minutes after that, the

wiry, resilient ranchwoman was sitting between them on the seat of the

station wagon, explaining how she happened to be clear of the pickup

when the blast occurred.



The suspicion that had been growing in Johnny's mind, now brought into

the open by his relief at finding Hetty alive and virtually unhurt,

bloomed into full flower.



"Barney," Johnny asked softly, "which oil drum did you put in the back

of the pickup?"



The facts were falling into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle

when the Carson City reporter, leading a caravan of cars and emergency

vehicles from town by a good ten minutes and beating the AEC and

military teams by twenty minutes, found the Circle T trio sitting in

the station wagon at the lip of the now faintly smoldering crater.



A half hour later, the AP man in San Francisco picked up the phone.



"I've just come back from that explosion," the Carson City stringer

said. The AP man put his hand over the phone and called across the

desk. "Get ready for a '95' first lead blast."



"O.K.," the San Francisco desk man said, "let's have it." He tucked the

phone between chin and shoulder and poised over his typewriter.



"Well, there's a crater more than one hundred feet across and ten feet

deep," the Carson City stringer dutifully recounted. "The scene is on

County Road 38, about forty miles east of here and the blast rocked

Carson City and caused extensive breakage for miles around."



"What caused it," the AP desk man asked as he pounded out a lead.



"A lady at the scene said her milk and eggs blew up," the Carson City

stringer said.



* * * * *



Ten miles south, the leading AEC disaster truck stopped behind the

six-strand fence blocking the range road. Two men with wire cutters,

jumped from the truck and snipped the twanging wires. The metal "Keep

Out" sign banged to the ground and was kicked aside. The truck rolled

through the gap and the men swung aboard. Behind them was a curtain of

dust rising sluggishly in the hot sky, marking the long convoy of other

official vehicles pressing hard on the trail of the emergency truck.



When the range road cut across the county highway, the driver paused

long enough to see that the heaviest smoke concentrations from the

unknown blast lay to the west. He swung left onto the oiled road and

barreled westward. In less than a mile, he spied the flashing red light

of a State trooper's car parked in the center of the road. The scene

looked like a combination of the San Francisco quake and the Los

Angeles county fair.



Dozens of cars, trucks, two fire engines and a Good Humor man were

scattered around the open range land on both sides of the vast crater

still smoldering in the road. A film of purple dust covered the

immediate area and still hung in the air, coating cars and people.

Scores of men, women and children lined the rim of the crater, gawking

into the smoky pit, while other scores roamed aimlessly around the

nearby hill and desert.



A young sheriff's deputy standing beside the State trooper's car raised

his hand to halt the AEC disaster van. The truck stopped and the

white-suited radiation team leaped from the vehicle, counters in hand,

racing for the crater.



"Back," the chief of the squad yelled at the top of his lungs.

"Everybody get back. This area is radiation contaminated. Hurry!"



There was a second of stunned comprehension and then a mad, pan-demonic

scrambling of persons and cars, bumping and jockeying to flee. The

radiation team fanned out around the crater, fumbling at the level

scales on their counters when the instruments failed to indicate

anything more than normal background count.



All of the vehicles had pulled back to safety--all except a slightly

battered station wagon still parked a yard or two from the eastern edge

of the crater.



The radiation squad leader ran over to the wagon. Three people, two men

and a dirty, disheveled and bloody-nosed older woman, sat in the front

seat munching Good Humor bars.



"Didn't you hear me?" the AEC man yelled. "Get outta here. This area's

hot. Radioactive. Dangerous. GET MOVING!"



The woman leaned out the window and patted the radiation expert

soothingly on the shoulder.



"Shucks, sonny, no need to get this excited over a little spilt milk."



"Milk," the AEC man yelped, purpling. "Milk! I said this is a hot area;

it's loaded with radiation. Look at this--" He pointed to the meter on

his counter, then stopped, gawked at the instrument and shook it. And

stared again. The meter flicked placidly along at the barely-above-normal

background level count.



"Hey, Jack," one of the other white-suited men on the far side of the

crater called, "this hole doesn't register a thing."



The squad chief stared incredulously at his counter and banged it

against the side of the station wagon. Still the needle held in the

normal zone. He banged it harder and suddenly the needle dropped to

zero as Hetty and her ranch hands peered over the AEC man's shoulder at

the dial.



"Now ain't that a shame," Barney said sympathetically. "You done broke

it."



The rest of the disaster squad, helmets off in the blazing sun and

lead-coated suits unfastened, drifted back to the squad leader at the

Circle T station wagon. A mile east, the rest of the AEC convoy had

arrived and halted in a huge fan of vehicles, parked a safe distance

from the crater. A line of more white-suited detection experts moved

cautiously forward.



With a stunned look, the first squad leader turned and walked slowly

down the road towards the approaching line. He stopped once and looked

back at the gaping hole, down at his useless counter, shook his head

and continued on to meet the advancing units.



By nightfall, new strands of barbed wire reflected the last rays of the

red Nevada sun. Armed military policemen and AEC security police in

powder-blue battle jackets, patrolled the fences around the county road

crater. And around the fence that now enclosed the immediate vicinity

of the Circle T ranch buildings. Floodlights bathed the wire and cast

an eerie glow over the mass of parked cars and persons jammed outside

the fence. A small helicopter sat off to the right of the impromptu

parking lot and an NBC newscaster gave the world a verbal description

of the scene while he tried to talk above the snorting of the

gas-powered generator that was supplying the Associated Press

radio-telephone link to San Francisco.



Black AEC vans and dun colored military vehicles raced to and from the

ranch headquarters, pausing to be cleared by the sentries guarding the

main gates.



The AP log recorded one hundred eighteen major daily papers using the

AP story that afternoon and the following morning:



CARSON CITY, NEV., May 12 (AP)--A kiloton eggnog rocked the scientific

world this morning.



"On a Nevada ranch, forty miles east of here, 60-year-old Mehatibel

Thompson is milking a cow that gives milk more powerful than an atomic

bomb. Her chickens are laying the triggering mechanisms.



"This the world learned today when an earth-shaking explosion

rocked...."



* * * * *



Inside the Circle T ranch house, Hetty, bathed and cleaned and only

slightly the worse for her experiences, was hustling about the kitchen

throwing together a hasty meal. Johnny and Barney had swept up a huge

pile of broken glass, crockery and dirt and Hetty had salvaged what

dishes remained unshattered by the blast.



She weaved through a dozen men grouped around the kitchen table, some

in military or security police garb, three of them wearing the uniform

of the atomic scientist in the field--bright Hawaiian sports shirts,

dark glasses, blue denims and sneakers. Johnny and Barney huddled

against the kitchen drainboard out of the main stream of traffic. The

final editions of the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, Oakland Tribune,

Los Angeles Herald-Express and the Carson City Appeal were spread

out on the table. Hetty pushed them aside to put down dishes.



The glaring black headlines stared up at her. "Dairy Detonation

Devastates Desert," the alliterative Chronicle banner read; "Bossy's

Blast Rocks Bay Area," said the Trib; "Atomic Butter-And-Egg Blast

Jars LA," the somewhat inaccurate Herald-Ex proclaimed; "Thompson

Ranch Scene of Explosion," the Appeal stated, hewing to solid facts.



"Mrs. Thompson," the oldest of the scientists said, "won't you please

put down those dishes for a few minutes and give us the straight story.

All afternoon long its been one thing or another with you and all we've

been able to get out of you is this crazy milk-egg routine."



"Time enough to talk after we've all had a bite to eat," Hetty said,

juggling a platter of steaks and a huge bowl of mashed potatoes to the

table. "Now we've all had a hard day and we can all stand to get on the

outside of some solid food. I ain't had a bite to eat since this

morning and I guess you boys haven't had much either. And since you've

seemed to have made yourselves to home here, then by golly, you're

going to sit down and eat with us.



"Besides," she added over her shoulder as she went back to the stove

for vegetables and bread, "me 'n Johnny have already told you what

story there is to tell. That's all there is to it."



She put more platters on the now-heaping table and then went around the

table pouring coffee from the big ranch pot. "All right, you men sit

down now and dig in," she ordered.



"Mrs. Thompson," an Army major with a heavy brush mustache said, "we

didn't come here to eat. We came for information."



Hetty shoved back a stray wisp of hair and glared at the man.



"Now you listen to me, you young whippersnapper. I didn't invite you,

but since you're here, you'll do me the goodness of being a mite more

polite," she snapped.



The major winced and glanced at the senior scientist. The older man

raised his eyes expressively and shrugged. He moved to the table and

sat down. There was a general scuffling of chairs and the rest of the

group took places around the big table. Johnny and Barney took their

usual flanking positions beside Hetty at the head of the board.



Hetty took her seat and looked around the table with a pleased smile.

"Now that's more like it."



She bowed her head and, after a startled glance, the strangers followed

suit.



"We thank Thee, dear Lord," Hetty said quietly, "for this food which we

are about to eat and for all Your help to us this day. It's been a

little rough in spots but I reckon You've got Your reasons for all of

it. Seein' as how tomorrow is Your day anyway, we ask that it be just a

mite quieter. Amen."



The satisfying clatter of chinaware and silver and polite muttered

requests for more potatoes and gravy filled the kitchen for the next

quarter of an hour as the hungry men went to work on the prime Circle T

yearling beef.



* * * * *



After his second steak, third helping of potatoes and gravy and fourth

cup of coffee, the senior scientist contentedly shoved back from the

table. Hetty was polishing the last dabs of gravy from her plate with a

scrap of bread. The scientist pulled a pipe and tobacco pouch from his

pocket.



"With your permission, m'am," he asked his hostess. Hetty grinned. "For

heaven's sake, fire it up, sonny. Big Jim--that was my husband--used to

say that no meal could be said properly finished unless it had been

smoked into position for digestion."



Several of the other men at the table followed suit with pipes, cigars

and cigarettes. Hetty smiled benignly around the table and turned to

the senior scientist.



"What did you say your name was, sonny?" she asked.



"Dr. Floyd Peterson, Mrs. Thompson," he replied, "and at forty-six

years of age, I deeply thank you for that 'sonny'."



He reached for the stack of newspapers on the floor beside his chair

and pushing back his plate, laid them on the table.



"Now, Mrs. Thompson, let's get down to facts," he rapped the headlines

with a knuckle. "You have played hell with our schedule and I've got to

have the answers soon before I have the full atomic commission and a

congressional investigation breathing down my neck.



"What did you use to make that junior grade earthquake?"



"Why, I've already told you more'n a dozen times, sonny," Hetty

replied. "It must of been the combination of them queer eggs and

Sally's milk."



The brush-mustached major sipping his coffee, spluttered and choked.

Beside him, the head of the AEC security force at Frenchman's Flat

leaned forward.



"Mrs. Thompson, I don't know what your motives are but until I find

out, I'm deeply thankful that you gave those news hounds this ... this,

butter and egg business," he said.



"Milk and eggs," Hetty corrected him mildly.



"Well, milk and eggs, then. But the time has ended for playing games.

We must know what caused that explosion and you and Mr. Culpepper and

Mr. Hatfield," he nodded to Johnny and Barney sitting beside Hetty,

"are the only ones who can tell us."



"Already told you," Hetty repeated. Johnny hid a grin.



"Look, Mrs. Thompson," Dr. Peterson said loudly and with ill-concealed

exasperation, "you created and set off an explosive force that dwarfed

every test we've made at Frenchman's Flat in four years. The force of

your explosive was apparently greater than that of a fair-sized atomic

device and only our Pacific tests--and those of the Russians--have been

any greater. Yet within a half hour or forty-five minutes after the

blast there wasn't a trace of radiation at ground level, no aerial

radiation and not one report of upper atmosphere contamination or

fallout within a thousand miles.



"Mrs. Thompson, I appeal to your patriotism. Your friends, your

country, the free people of the world, need this invention of yours."



Hetty's eyes grew wide and then her features set in a mold of firm

determination. Shoving back her chair and raising to stand stiffly

erect and with chin thrust forward, she was every inch the True Pioneer

Woman of the West.



"I never thought of that," she said solemnly. "By golly, if my country

needs this like that, then by golly, my country's going to have it."



The officials leaned forward in anticipation.



"You can have Sally's Cloverdale Marathon III and I don't want one cent

for her, either. And you can take the hens, too."



There was a stunned silence and then the Army major strangled on a

mouthful of coffee; the security man turned beet red in the face and

Dr. Peterson's jaw bounced off his breastbone. Johnny, unable to hold

back an explosion of laughter, dashed for the back porch and collapsed.



* * * * *



The kitchen door slammed and Dr. Peterson stamped out on to the porch,

pipe clamped between clenched teeth, his face black with anger and

frustration. He ignored Johnny who was standing beside the rail wiping

tears from his eyes. Culpepper recovered himself and walked over to the

irate physicist.



"Dr. Peterson you're a man of science," Johnny said, "and a scientist

is supposed to be willing to accept a fact and then, possibly determine

the causes behind the fact after he recognizes what he sees. Isn't that

so?"



"Now, look here," Peterson angrily swung around to face Johnny. "I've

taken all I intend to take from you people with your idiotic story. I

don't intend to...."



Johnny took the older man by the elbow and gently but firmly propelled

him from the porch towards the barn. "I don't intend to either insult

your intelligence, Dr. Peterson, or attempt to explain what has

happened here. But I do intend to show you what we know."



Bright floodlights illuminated the yard and a crew of soldiers were

stringing telephone wires from the guarded front gate across the open

space to the ranch house. Beyond the new barbed wire fence, there was

an excited stir and rush for the wire as a sharp-eyed newsman spotted

Johnny and the scientist crossing the yard. The two men ignored the

shouted requests for more up-to-the-minute information as they walked

into the barn. Johnny switched on the lights.



The lowing of the two prize Guernseys in the stalls at the right of the

door changed to loud, plaintive bawling as the lights came on. Both

cows were obviously in pain from their swollen and unmilked udders.



"Seeing is believing. Doc?" Johnny asked, pointing to the cows.



"Seeing what?" Peterson snapped.



"I knew we were going to have some tall explaining to do when you

fellows took over here," Johnny said, "and, of course, I don't blame

you one bit. That was some blast Hetty set off out there."



"You don't know," Dr. Peterson murmured fearfully, "you just don't

know."



"So," Johnny continued, "I deliberately didn't milk these cows, so that

you could see for yourself that we aren't lying. Now, mind you, I don't

have the foggiest idea WHY this is happening, but I'm going to show you

at least, WHAT happened."



He picked up a pair of milk buckets from a rack beside the door and

walked towards the cow stalls, Peterson trailing. "This." Johnny said,

pointing to the larger of the two animals, "is Queenie. Her milk is

just about as fine as you can get from a champion milk producing line.

And this," he reached over and patted the flank of the other cow, "is

Sally's Cloverdale Marathon III. She's young and up to now has given

good but not spectacular quantities or qualities of milk. She's from

the same blood line as Queenie. Sally had dried up from her first calf

and we bred her again and on Wednesday she came fresh. Only it isn't

milk that she's been giving. Watch!"



Kicking a milking stool into position, he placed a bucket under

Queenie's distended bag and began squirting the rich, foaming milk into

the pail with a steady, fast and even rhythm. When he had finished, he

set the two full buckets with their thick heads of milk foam, outside

the stall and brought two more clean, empty buckets. He moved to the

side of the impatient Sally. As Peterson watched, Johnny filled the

buckets with the same, flat, oily-looking white fluid that Sally had

been producing since Wednesday. The scientist began to show mild

interest.



Johnny finished, stripped the cow, and then carried the pails out and

set them down beside the first two.



"O.K., now look them over yourself," he told Peterson.



The scientist peered into the buckets. Johnny handed him a ladle.



"Look, Culpepper," Peterson said, "I'm a physicist, not a farmer or an

agricultural expert. How do you expect me to know what milk is supposed

to do? Until I was fifteen years old, I thought the milk came out of

one of those spigots and the cream out of another."



"Stir it," Johnny ordered. The scientist took the ladle angrily and

poked at the milk in Queenie's buckets.



"Taste it," Johnny said. Peterson glared at the younger man and then

took a careful sip of the milk. Some of the froth clung to his lips and

he licked it off. "Taste like milk to me," he said.



"Smell it," Johnny ordered. Peterson sniffed.



"O.K., now do the same things to the other buckets."



Peterson swished the ladle through the buckets containing Sally's milk.

The white liquid swirled sluggishly and oillike. He bent over and

smelled and made a grimace.



"Go on," Johnny demanded, "taste it."



Peterson took a tiny sip, tasted and then spat.



"All right," he said, "I'm now convinced that there's something

different about this milk. I'm not saying anything is wrong with it

because I wouldn't know. All I'm admitting is that it is different. So

what?"



* * * * *



"Come on," Johnny took the ladle from him. He carried the buckets of

Queenie's milk into the cooler room and dumped them in a small

pasturizer.



Then carrying the two pails of Sally's milk, Johnny and the physicist

left the barn and went to the shattered remains of the tractor shed.



Fumbling under wrecked and overturned tables and workbenches, Johnny

found an old and rusted pie tin.



Placing the tin in the middle of the open spaces of the yard, he turned

to Peterson. "Now you take that pail of milk and pour a little into the

pan. Not much, now, just about enough to cover the bottom or a little

more." He again handed the ladle to Peterson.



The scientist dipped out a small quantity of the white fluid and

carefully poured it into the pie plate.



"That's enough," Johnny cautioned. "Now let's set these buckets a good

long ways from here." He picked up the buckets and carried them to the

back porch. He vanished into the kitchen.



By this time, the strange antics of the two men had attracted the

attention of the clamoring newsmen outside the fence and they jammed

against the wire, shouting pleas for an interview or information. The

network television camera crews trained their own high-powered lights

into the yard to add to the brilliance of the military lights and began

recording the scene. Dr. Peterson glared angrily at the mob and turned

as Johnny rejoined him. "Culpepper, are you trying to make a fool of

me?" he hissed.



"Got a match?" Johnny queried, ignoring the question. The pipe-smoking

scientist pulled out a handful of kitchen matches. Johnny produced a

glass fish casting rod with a small wad of cloth tied to the weighted

hook. Leading Peterson back across the yard about fifty feet, Johnny

handed the rag to Peterson.



"Smell it," he said. "I put a little kerosene on it so it would burn

when it goes through the air." Peterson nodded.



"You much of a fisherman?" Johnny asked.



"I can drop a fly on a floating chip at fifty yards," the physicist

said proudly. Johnny handed him the rod and reel. "O.K., Doc, light up

your rag and then let's see you drop it in that pie plate."



While TV cameras hummed and dozens of still photographers pointed

telescopic lenses and prayed for enough light, Dr. Peterson ignited the

little wad of cloth. He peered behind to check for obstructions and

then, with the wrist-flicking motion of the devoted and expert

fisherman, made his cast. The tiny torch made a blurred, whipping

streak of light and dropped unerringly into the pie plate in the middle

of the yard.



The photographers had all the light they needed!



The night turned violet as a violent ball of purple fire reared and

boiled into the darkened sky. The flash bathed the entire ranch

headquarters and the packed cars and throngs outside the fence in the

strange brilliance. The heat struck the dumfounded scientist and young

rancher like the suddenly-opened door of a blast furnace.



It was over in a second as the fire surged and then winked out. The

sudden darkness blinded them despite the unchanged power of the

television and military floodlights still focused on the yard.

Pandemonium erupted from the ranks of newsmen and photographers who had

witnessed the dazzling demonstration.



Peterson stared in awe at the slightly smoking and warped pie tin.

"Well, cut out my tongue and call me Oppenheimer," he exclaimed.



"That was just the milk," Johnny said. "You know of a good safe place

we could try it out with one of those eggs? I'd be afraid to test 'em

anywhere around here after what happened to Hetty this morning."



* * * * *



An hour later, a military helicopter chewed its way into the night,

carryin



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