The next morning he had a quick word with the other two Investigators before they left their room. He told them what had happened during the night and explained that he had an important phone call to make. He wanted them to get Dusty away from the house for a couple of hours.

Ascención had made scrambled eggs with green peppers for breakfast. It was one of Jupe’s favorite dishes and contained no starch, but he politely refused any. He said he had a slight stomach ache.

That was Pete’s cue. He asked Dusty if he would take them fishing in the lake. The rancher agreed. Jupe announced he would stay at the ranch house because of his stomach. Half an hour later he was alone with Ascención.

A plate of fresh rolls had been left on the table. Jupe fought a brief battle with himself. They smelled so good. Jupiter grabbed a few and stuffed them quickly into his mouth. After all, he had to have something to keep up his strength till lunchtime. He looked around for the phone.

He found it in Dusty’s small office off the living room. Closing the door behind him, Jupe sat down at the desk and looked through the phone book for the direct-dial numbers to California.

Hector Sebastian answered at once. Jupiter told him where he was and came straight to the point.

“Could you do me a favor and call my computer information service from your terminal?” he asked his old friend.

Hector Sebastian was a successful mystery writer. He had once been a private eye himself and enjoyed giving the Three Investigators an assist with their cases whenever they asked him.

“No problem,” the writer told him.

“Great,” Jupe said. “All you need to do is enter my password. It’s D-ET-E-C-T. Then flip through the menus till you access the encyclopedia.”

“Right,” Hector Sebastian said. “And the subject is.

“Uh, burros,” the Investigator told him.

“Come again?”

“You know, burros, the small donkeys used as beasts of burden.”

“Gotcha.”

Jupe read off the questions about burros he needed answered. Sebastian noted them down and promised to phone Jupiter as soon as he had the answers.

While he was waiting, Jupe looked around the small office. Ordinarily he would have thought twice before snooping on anyone. But he figured Dustin Rice had told the guys nothing but lies since he had first shown up at Jupe’s house. The Three Investigators had a right to find out as many hard facts as they could.

Jupe’s mind buzzed with questions. Why was his puzzle chosen out of the many perfect entries? Why was Rice so eager for him to get to the ranch fast? What made that Mexican woman want to stop him? And why did Blondie seem to know Jupe, though she’d never seen him before?

Jupe didn’t come across anything of interest on Dusty’s shelves except some large-scale maps of the Sierra Madre. Someone had penciled question marks all over them. Probably Dusty. In the top drawer of the desk were the deeds to the ranch. Jupe glanced through them until he came to the signature at the end.

ASCENCIÓN BARBERA.

So Ascención had sold the ranch to Dusty and become his field hand and cook. It seemed to explain the Mexican’s hostility to the rancher.

In the bottom drawer of the desk was a tape recorder. Jupe took it out, turned down the volume, and pressed the play button.

This time he recognized his own voice at once.

He heard himself saying the same words again and again.

“Come. Here. Blondie. Giddy. Up. Woe. Blondie. Come. Here. ”

After a while, he carefully rewound the tape and put the recorder back where he had found it.

A few minutes later the phone rang. “I’ve got that info for you,” Hector Sebastian told him. “Ready?”

“Yeah.” Jupe turned over his list of questions and scribbled the answers on the back.

“Thanks,” he said when the mystery writer had finished. “That’s super.”

“Any time, Jupe. Give me a call when you get back and I’ll treat you troublemakers to a meal. I’m curious about where these burros are going to take you.”

Jupe promised he’d call and thanked Sebastian again before he hung up. He had a lot to tell Pete and Bob and a pile of questions to chew over with them. But they wouldn’t be back for at least an hour. He left the office, closing the door carefully behind him.

He hadn’t seen Blondie that morning. Now that he had the answers to his questions about burros, he felt more interested in the little animal. He decided to pay her a visit.

Ascención was in the field with her, refilling her water tub. The moment the burro saw Jupe she trotted eagerly toward him. He patted her neck.

The Mexican had taken off his shirt in the noonday sun. Jupe noticed that his chest and back were the same even brown color as his face. Jupe couldn’t tell if that was Ascención’s own color or if a lot of work outdoors had deepened the man’s naturally brown skin. For sure the Mexican was darker than Jupe. Even with daily swims, Jupe was still a pale Anglo who spent too much time indoors in front of his computer screen.

Jupe gestured at the burro. “Blondie’s no longer. ” He didn’t know the Spanish word for “hobbled,” but Ascención guessed what Jupe meant when he pointed to the burro’s front legs.

“No, that. ” Ascención used the word that seemed to come naturally to him when he talked about Dusty. It was X-rated. “That took the rope off her yesterday evening.”

“Why?”

“He’s not afraid she’ll run away now that you’re here.”

“Me? Why me?”

“She’s grateful to you.”

“What for?”

“She thinks you saved her life. And they are good animals, burros. Very faithful. Very grateful.”

He picked up his bucket and walked away. Jupe went after him, followed by Blondie. But the Mexican refused to answer any more questions. He said he had work to do.

Pete and Bob had caught several trout. Ascención grilled them for lunch. Jupe suddenly recovered from his stomach ache and ate two of them. After all, they were pure protein.

“Let’s walk off those calories,” Jupe said after the meal. “How about it, guys?”

Pete and Bob guessed at once that he wanted to talk to them alone. The three of them set out across the fields to a clump of woods near the lake.

As soon as they were settled in a clearing among the trees, Jupe told them about his call to Hector Sebastian. He pulled his sheet of notes out of his jeans pocket.

“Burros have a very good sense of hearing,” he reported. “Amazingly good. And they’re not like dogs. They don’t recognize people by their smell. Mostly by their voices. They’ll often attach themselves to one person and when they do, they’ll respond at once to that person’s voice.”

“You mean once they fall for you, they’re hooked for life,” Bob said. “Looks like Blondie’s all yours.”

“Knock it off,” Jupe growled. “I bet that’s what the whole moronic crossword contest was about. Dusty was looking for a voice that matched some other guy’s. Some young American who had been a friend to Blondie.”

He explained what Ascención had said.

“Somebody who saved her life at some time. I don’t know how. And I don’t know who that guy was. But when Dusty heard my entry to the competition, he thought my voice was closest to that other person’s. So he edited my tape onto the machine I found in his desk this morning. He kept only the words he needed. Come here, Blondie, whoa, and so on. Then he tried those words out on the burro. But I guess the taped voice didn’t work. Not very well, anyway. So Dusty couldn’t be sure until we got here and Blondie could hear my natural voice. That’s why he was so nervous all through breakfast yesterday. He couldn’t wait to find out. And when it did work — remember how excited he got?”

Pete and Bob were silent for a moment, thinking over what Jupe had said.

“Makes sense so far,” Bob agreed. “But. ”

“Yeah,” Pete put in. “But what’s it all about? Why spend all that dough and waste all that time to find a voice a little Mexican burro thinks she recognizes?”