An Ear for Danger, стр. 12

“Okay,” he told her. “Whatever you say goes. From now on you’re the boss.”

When Dusty caught up with the three guys, he had to admit the burro had picked a good place to camp for the night. Firewood and grass were plentiful, and as Blondie showed Jupe by leading him to it, a spring of clear water flowed nearby.

It got cold when the sun went down. The Three Investigators pulled on sweaters over their T-shirts. Pete soon had a good fire going and helped Dusty unload the horse. Dusty unsaddled, fed, and watered her. Then he cooked up a big pot of beans and rice.

Jupe looked at the food on his plate. Carbohydrates! He gulped. Beans weren’t too bad. At least they contained protein as well as starch. But rice was pure poison. Nothing but starch.

Jupe came to a decision. He was on the trail of an exciting case. He needed his strength. Keil Halfebrot would have to take care of his own lettuce leaves for a while. Jupe plunged in and cleaned his plate.

And didn’t ask for seconds. Somehow his stomach felt full. I must be too tired to eat, he thought.

After dinner Bob took off his sneakers and rubbed his feet. They were sore from all that climbing.

“How much farther are we going?” he asked the rancher.

Dusty looked at him sharply. “Aren’t you enjoying the trip?”

Bob looked back at him even more sharply. “I was just thinking about Blondie’s toenails,” he said sarcastically. “Plenty of rocks and stones up here.” He was fed up with Dusty’s lies. And he wanted the impatient rancher to know that he and Jupe and Pete weren’t just kids who would go along with anything Dusty cared to tell them. They hadn’t fallen for that fairy tale about Blondie’s toenails.

“Yeah,” Pete chimed in. “Some of those trails were rougher than a nail file. Why don’t we turn her loose right here?”

Dusty didn’t answer at once. He threw some sticks onto the fire. “That burro knows where she’s going,” he said at last. “She’s heading back where she came from. And she’ll know when she gets there.”

“Home, sweet home,” Jupe said thoughtfully. “Why do you think she ever cut out if the place meant so much to her?”

“It’s hard to say,” the rancher told him impatiently. “Sometimes wild burros just stray away from the herd. Who knows why?”

Jupe knew Dusty was lying again. Blondie hadn’t just strayed all those miles down to the ranch. Someone had led her there. Someone she trusted and would follow. Maybe someone Blondie thought had saved her life, as Ascencion had put it. Someone whose voice was uncannily like Jupe’s.

The burro was grazing farther and farther from the fire. The rancher glanced uneasily at her. “You’d better tether her for the night,” he warned Jupe. He managed a fake smile. “We don’t want her wandering back to the ranch again.”

Jupe hoisted himself to his feet. He had hardly noticed it while he was riding, but his legs were now so stiff he could hardly stand up. He walked over to Blondie like a man on stilts and gave her a pat on the rump. “You’ll stick with me, right Blondie?” he said.

“Just the same, I’d feel safer if you tied her up,” Dusty grumbled. “Go on, tether her to a tree.”

Jupe turned and faced him. He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “She might want a drink of water in the night.”

“She’s already had all the water she needs.”

It was a showdown. Jupe knew it and he wasn’t going to give in.

“You want her tied up, do it yourself,” he said. “If she’ll let you touch her.”

His eyes met the rancher’s for a long moment. Blondie might be the boss on the trail. But Jupe was the boss here now.

“Okay,” Dusty agreed at last, crawling into his sleeping bag. “I guess she’ll stick around as long as you’re here.”

“Why?” Jupe asked curtly. “Why do you think she’s so attached to me?”

“Quien sabe, as the Mexicans say.” The rancher turned over on his side and closed his eyes. “Who knows?”

Jupe hobbled back to the fire. Bob winked at him as he passed.

Jupe eased himself into his sleeping bag. Soon all four of them were asleep.

It was still dark when Jupe woke up. The fire had gone out and for a moment he was too sleepy to understand what had wakened him. Then he heard it again.

A protesting braying.

Blondie.

He scrambled stiffly out of his sleeping bag and felt his way between the trees to the spring.

As he entered the clearing he saw a streak of light. It moved up and down and around in circles. At first all he could see in the waving light beam was Blondie. She had reared up on her hind legs and was plunging wildly.

Then the light stilled for a moment and he saw the figure of a woman. She was holding a flashlight in one hand and tugging on the burro’s rope with the other, trying to drag Blondie away into the trees.

Blondie brayed again. She reared still higher, ready to stamp on this stranger who was pulling at the rope around her neck.

Jupe knew how the burro dealt with rattlesnakes. He was more scared for the woman than he was for Blondie.

“Let her go,” he shouted.

Running forward, he tried to calm the little burro. “Blondie. Steady, Blondie,” he called in a soothing voice. Instantly the woman dropped the rope. Released, Blondie settled back on four legs. She turned to Jupe. He stroked her nose, looking at the woman.

The flashlight went out.

In the sudden darkness Jupe heard the sound of running. The woman had plunged away into the night. The next moment Pete and Bob joined Jupe in the clearing.

“What’s going on?” Bob asked. “Blondie woke me up.”

“Someone just tried to steal her,” Jupe explained. “A woman. ”

“Uh — oh,” Pete said. “That blonde again. The one who tried to drown you. Is she after burros now?”

“No.” Jupe shook his head. “I only saw her for a second in the flashlight. But I’d know her anywhere. She was that Mexican woman from the bus. The one with the purple shawl and the long black pigtails.”

10

Stranger in the Night

The next two days were like the first. Hour by hour, mile by mile, they traveled deeper into the Sierra Madre. The mountains seemed to go on forever. As soon as they climbed to the top of one rise, they would see another one ahead.

Narrow valleys separated the ranges. For a few miles the Three Investigators would be surrounded by pine trees. Then, as they climbed again above the tree line, they would have to clamber up bare rocky gulleys until they were over another range.

“Lucky for us it’s summer,” Pete said as he and Bob scrambled over the rocks. “In winter we’d be up to our necks in snow.”

“Doesn’t sound that bad to me,” Bob grunted. He was dripping with sweat.

Their day began as soon as the sun rose. They ate hot beans and rice for breakfast, cold beans and rice for lunch, hot beans and rice for dinner. It was boring and it was starchy but Jupe’s guilt meter was on low. He was determined to solve this case and see where Blondie was leading them. Everything else — even watching carbohydrates — was on hold. Anyway, he never wanted more than one serving of Dusty’s glop.

Three or four times a day Blondie would stop to graze. The Three Investigators welcomed these halts. It gave them a chance to stretch out and rest. It also gave Dusty and his horse a chance to catch up. Although the rancher fed his horse plenty of oats, she seemed to get more tired each day. Sometimes she lagged a mile behind Pete and Bob.

At one of these rest stops, the Three Investigators lounged in the grass while Blondie munched.

“I want to know why these women have it in for us,” Bob said. “First a blonde tries to deep-six Jupiter and then a brunette tries to steal our burro.”

“Maybe the Mexican woman’s burro went lame,” Pete guessed, “and she needed something to carry her stuff.”

Bob didn’t buy it. “You’d think a Mexican would be sharper about burros. She’d know that you can’t drag one off against its will.”