“It did. So Gower is out there in the desert, riding his mule. A is back in camp, waiting for him to return. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to either of them, the Manhattan Project is about to culminate its top-secret work by testing the first atomic bomb.

“Night falls, and the hours pass. By chance, Gower’s route takes him near ground zero. The bomb is sitting on top of a hundred-foot metal tower, wired up and ready to go. The scientists are in their bunkers, waiting out the passing thunderstorm. Finally, just before dawn, the weather clears. At five twenty-nine AM they push the button and the bomb explodes. The test is a great success—except that Gower is caught by the fringes of the blast. Back in camp, A has a ringside seat to the explosion: a direct view of the Trinity site, twenty miles away. You have a line of sight to Trinity from here—right there.”

She pointed into the indistinct expanse of nothingness between the mountains, filled with purple shadows. It gave her the creeps, looking into the empty, demon-haunted desert, where one of the most significant events in human history had taken place.

“Must’ve scared the crap out of him,” Skip said.

“That’s an understatement. Can you imagine what A felt when he saw a flash of light brighter than the sun? And then that monstrous fireball, the size of a city, punching up into the sky, along with the searing heat. A minute later, the wave of overpressure would have hit him, along with the terrible roar of the explosion. Nothing like this had ever been seen before in the history of the world. Even the scientists who knew what to expect were awed beyond belief and rendered speechless. Oppenheimer compared it to the radiance of a ‘thousand suns.’”

She paused, still looking out toward the desert. “Gower was badly hurt. He’s lucky his eyes didn’t melt, which happened to so many at Hiroshima who were looking up when the bomb went off.”

“So what do you think A did after he saw the explosion?”

“What can he do? He waits for his partner to return. Think of the guts that took. It was probably ten hours or more before Gower struggles back to High Lonesome. And what does A see then? Gower: bleeding, his skin burned red and coming off in sheets, his hair and clothes singed. The mule, too, was probably bloody, its hair burnt. Both received a massive dose of radiation and were dying. One of the symptoms of radiation poisoning is severe mental confusion and a raging, unquenchable thirst. So Gower’s raving mad. A probably tried to help him, but Gower soon died, most likely screaming in agony.”

“Jesus.”

“I can’t even imagine what that partner must have thought: witnessing the blast and then seeing his partner transformed into a gibbering, flayed monstrosity. It must have seemed like the work of the devil.”

“How do you know A didn’t split the moment he saw that blast go off ?”

“Like I said: He wouldn’t abandon his partner. And he was a religious man: not Christian, but a believer in the Apache tradition, as evidenced by that medicine bundle. In Apache belief, you must bury the dead. It’s a sacred obligation. So A had no choice but to bury the body of his friend and partner, which he did.”

“So you think Gower was deliberately buried?”

“Yes, and I’m kicking myself for not realizing it earlier. A doesn’t search the body, so he doesn’t realize Gower is carrying a gold cross … or if he does know it, he’s beyond caring.”

Skip tossed a few more sticks on the fire, and it flared up, beating back the encroaching darkness. “So he buried him in the cellar.”

“Yes, because that’s where the wind-blown sand had drifted in and was soft and deep and easy to dig. Now I understand why the body was in that strange hunched, quasi-fetal position: that’s the traditional flexed position of Apache burials. The one arm sticking out probably just flopped out that way when A dumped the body in the hole. As soon as Gower is in the ground, A flees. He did his duty, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t terrified. So terrified that he leaves everything behind—the mountain soil bundle, tent, bedrolls, and the rest of that stuff we uncovered in the campsite. Except … he does one other thing before he leaves. He puts down the mule to relieve its suffering. And he never returns—or dies before he can. Otherwise, that mountain soil bundle wouldn’t have still been here.”

“So what happened to him then?”

Nora was silent for a moment. “This happened seventy-six years ago, so A is probably dead. Doesn’t take a mind reader to guess it probably changed the course of his life.”

“I wonder if he ever told anyone.”

“I doubt it. They were illegally trespassing in a closed military area. Gower’s disappearance was never explained. I’m sure he took his secret to the grave.”

“Yikes.” Skip finished his beer. “You know, creepy stories always make me hungry. Dinner?”

“Sure.”

An almost full moon just peeked over the ridges to their left, above the mountains, struggling through a brief opening in the clouds.

“Another beer?” Skip asked.

“No. Actually, yes. What the hell.”

They sat by the fire in folding chairs. Skip prepared the coals and tossed a couple of steaks on the grill, along with some poblano chilis and corn. They watched everything sizzle for a few minutes. Then Skip forked the steaks over and turned the chilis. Suddenly he paused, then stood up, facing the rising moon.