While they looked, however, the aeroplane shot away toward the valley. A moment later the Louise rose over the summit to the east and followed.
The report of a revolver brought the boys’ eyes back to earth again and they saw three men rushing down the gully toward the camp-fire, which still blazed dimly in the light of the morning sun. As they came nearer to the boys, they leveled their weapons as if determined to prevent further escape. Then additional shots came from somewhere. The boys hardly realized the exact location of the shooters, and two of the men crumpled down and rolled along the bottom of the gully.
The third man threw up his hands and faced about. The two aeroplanes again circled over the gully and the boys saw Ben looking down from the seat of the Ann. They could not distinguish the face or figure of the aviator on the Louise for she was now making for the summit.
What followed took place so unexpectedly and with such rapidity that the boys hardly knew what was going on until three men sprang out of a shallow depression on the east side of the gully and moved toward the burly fellow who had been their captor a short time before.
They saw one of the men slip a pair of handcuffs over the wrists of the man they had talked with in the whiskey cavern and point toward the summit, over which the aeroplanes were now moving.
CHAPTER X.
AN UNEXPECTED HAPPENING.
“Hit me a clip on the wrist and wake me up!” exclaimed Jimmie.
The three men were entire strangers to the boys, and yet they appeared to be friendly. They had expected only hostile meetings in the gully. The men smiled at the evident surprise of the boys and pushed the burly prisoner on in advance.
“Who rubbed the lamp?” asked Carl, as he clambered laboriously up toward the summit. “I never saw anything exactly like this!”
“Say, Mr. Policeman,” Jimmie called out to a man in citizen’s dress whose smutty face disclosed a week’s growth of beard, “me friend here wants to know who rubbed the lamp for this last scene.”