Dan Reid - the fourteen year old nephew of the Lone Ranger - was one of two passengers in the stage coach heading south towards the town of Bottleneck. The other passenger was a girl of nineteen or twenty, who had introduced herself as Betty. There had been a third passenger, but he had left the lumbering vehicle at a crossroads fifteen minutes earlier. Betty was telling Dan about how she was going to marry Jim Stevens, an engineer, when she suddenly yelled at the driver to stop the stage. She had realized that she had been robbed! Her handbag was missing - and the only person who could have taken it was the other passenger who left the stage...