“Look here!” he shouted, “This paper was taken from the monkey-faced man who chased Jimmie up New York bay! The fellow smashed his machine and lay with a broken arm in Robinson’s barn, away back east, until Kit found a doctor to fix him up. This paper, enclosed in an envelope, fell from his pocket when his coat was removed.” “Read it!” exclaimed Gilmore excitedly. “It isn’t much to read,” Ben explained. “All it says is: ‘In Two Sisters Canyon’.” “There you are!” cried Carl, hopping about in his enthusiasm. “That paper makes a date, not for the meeting with the outlaws but for the meeting of the men who traveled from New York to warn them of their danger, and get them out of the country.” “That’s just the idea!” the sheriff said with a laugh. “Are all your New York boys like these?” he added with a smile turning to Havens. “I’m afraid not,” was the laughing reply. “The wits of these boys were sharpened in the streets of the East Side.” Shortly after midnight Ben and Carl, accompanied by Stroup, departed in the _Bertha_ for the valley where the _Louise_ had been left. The clouds were thinning a little, and the darkness was not so intense as it had been earlier in the evening. Stroup knew every inch of the way, and so the machine made good progress until it came over the little green bowl which had been the scene of so many adventures. “There’s no light there!” Ben said, with a sigh, as they passed the lip of the pit. “I don’t believe there’s any one here.” “There’s just a little flicker of light,” Stroup declared. “And it looks to me like the embers of a camp-fire.” “We didn’t have any fire!” Ben explained. “Then Jimmie and Kit must have returned,” Carl put in. “They may be there yet. Of course we’re going down to see?” “That’s what we came here for,” Stroup answered. “Only be careful, boy, how you bring her down!” Ben smiled at the big deputy’s timidity, and brought the machine to within a few feet of the embers which had been left by the fire built to cook the outlaws’ steak. As Kit and Jimmie had left the camp two or three hours previous in the machine they had repaired, of course no one was seen about the place. Ben and Carl ran eagerly over the surface of the green bowl with their flashlights, but no trace of their chums could be found. Even the shelter tents had been taken away by the boys. Discouraged at last, the boys returned to the machine, and the three mounted upward through the clouds, now thinning fast. The moon was rising, too, laying a silver floor over the upper surface of the moving clouds. “Now there’s the peak!” Ben said, pointing. “And there’s an aeroplane on it, too! And also a scrap!” CHAPTER XXIV. THE CLUE ABOVE THE CLOUDS. “I’ll tell you what I think,” Jimmie exclaimed as the boys gazed toward the peak. “I believe that gink had busted up the _Louise_, not knowing how to run her, and that they’ve abandoned her there.”