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 pre