now," 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