clue to the puzzle.
“Isn’t Blondie getting enough to eat?” Jupe asked innocently.
“I’m worried about her hooves.” The rancher frowned over his coffee. “You see, burros originally came from North Africa. They’re used to hard, stony ground. Their hooves grow very fast, like toenails. Rocks and gravel keep them filed down. If burros stay too long in a soft, grassy place, their hooves keep growing until they double up under their feet.” He put his coffee down. “After a while it cripples them.”
“Can’t you trim them?” Pete asked.
He’d once watched a friend do just that with a straight-edged razor.
“Nah.” Dusty was still frowning. “A wild burro like that. She won’t let me near her. She’d kick out at once if I even tried to touch her legs.”
Jupe thought Blondie would probably let him trim her hooves. But he kept quiet. He could feel that Dusty was leading up to something. Something that had nothing to do with Blondie’s toenails.
“I think I really ought to turn her loose,” Dusty went on. “Let her go back into the mountains where she came from.” He looked at Jupe. “The trouble is, she won’t leave now. Now that you’re here.”
Jupe remembered what Ascención had said. “He’s not afraid she’ll run away now that you’re here.” Jupe could have asked Dusty why he hadn’t turned Blondie loose weeks ago. He must have known about her hooves then. But he realized that the rancher was getting to the point now. The real point that would bring the Three Investigators one step closer to solving this case.
“Unless you went with her, Jupe,” Dusty said thoughtfully. “I mean, we could all go. Take a little camping trip up into the mountains.” He glanced at the three guys. “How does it sound to you?”
It sounded about as phony as a three-dollar bill to Jupe. He caught Bob’s eye and gave him a quick wink.
Bob understood Jupe’s signal at once. It meant, let’s stall until we’ve talked about this. “We’ll get back to you,” Bob said.
“When?” Dusty asked anxiously. “How soon — ”
“As soon as we’ve made up our minds,” Pete explained, heading for the door, followed by his two friends. The three guys walked across the lower field until they were well out of hearing of the house.
“I guess it’s almost time for the main event,” Bob said when they were settled on the grass. “That trip into the mountains is what this riff’s all about. That what you figure, Jupe?”
“Yeah.” Jupe nodded. “That’s what Dusty needed me for. My voice. So that Blondie wouldn’t just run away. She’d
“What’s way up there?” Pete wanted to know, glancing at the high range beyond the ranch. “Gold?”
“Sure.” Bob smiled. “The treasure of the Sierra Madre.” He picked a blade of grass and chewed it. “Well, how does it grab you guys? Want to hit the trail?”
“Okay with me,” Pete decided. He enjoyed camping out, cooking over a wood fire, lying in a sleeping bag under the night sky. “How about you two? It might get pretty rough up there.”
“No rougher than a road trip with a rock band,” Bob said. “And that can be plenty rough.” He looked at Jupe. “Whaddaya say?” he asked.
Jupe had never thought of himself as the outdoor type. He would rather think with his brains than his feet. But as an Investigator, he’d had to do a lot of hard legwork in the past. And they were going to solve this case no matter what it took.
“Sure,” he said. “Sierra Madre, here we come. Let’s go tell Rice the good news.”
Jupe was right. It was good news to Dusty. He grinned broadly when Pete told him.
“What say we start tomorrow?” Dusty suggested eagerly.
The Three Investigators agreed that the next day would be fine. Still grinning, the rancher drove off to Lareto to buy supplies for the trip. Pete gave him a big stack of “Miss you” and “Wish you were here” greeting cards to mail to Kelly. Then the three guys split up until lunchtime.
Pete went down to the lake to fish. Bob settled on the porch to clean and disinfect his contact lenses. It was a chore he had to do every week and it might be difficult on the trip. Jupe went to look for Ascención. He had some questions he wanted to ask him.
He found the ranch hand in the kitchen trying to fix a walkie-talkie. He had taken it apart but didn’t seem to be able to put it back together again.
“It’s not my trade,” the Mexican grumbled in Spanish. “Radios. What do I know about radios? Cattle, horses — that’s what I know about.”
“Let me try,” Jupe offered. “I’m used to working with gadgets. Doesn’t it work at all?”
“No. Of course not. Do you think I pulled it apart to amuse myself? I couldn’t get a sound out of it.”
“What do you use it for?”
“To talk into.”
“Is there someone else around here who has one of these things?” Jupe was wondering whom Ascención found to talk to. Except for that distant church tower on the other side of the lake, he hadn’t seen any buildings within miles of the ranch.
“Not as far as I know.”
“Then why do you want it fixed?”
“Because it’s broken.”
Jupe had to be satisfied with that. He soon discovered what was wrong with the walkie-talkie’s receiver — a faulty connection. He didn’t have the right kind of wire to mend it with. So he had to improvise, stripping a length of electrical cord and using the thin copper wire from that.
“Have you known many young Americans?” he inquired in a casual, friendly way as he worked.
“No.” The Mexican was watching him with grave interest. “Are they all as good at fixing things as you are?”
“Some of them.” Jupe tried again. “Have there been any other young American guys staying at the ranch?”
“When?”
“In the past three or four months. Since Blondie came here.”
Ascención shrugged. “Sometimes people stop by,” he said.
“Did any of them sound like me? You know, my voice.”
The Mexican’s craggy face had its usual impassive look, but his dark eyes were smiling.
“All North Americans sound alike to me,” he said.
“They don’t all sound alike to Blondie.”
“Burros have better ears than I do.”
It was a no-go situation, Jupe realized. Ascención knew he was being pumped for information and he wasn’t going to spill.
Jupe finished reassembling the device and switched it on. He couldn’t get any response to his call signals, no matter how he adjusted the antenna, but he was satisfied the walkie-talkie was working again. If there was anyone with another walkie-talkie within range, Ascención would be able to
