As the carriage sped along, Tracinda learned that the man beside her in the carriage was Kid Hawpe, the top gun of Blackjack's gang. That's all he would tell her and so they rode in silence except for the sound of hoof-beats and the creaking of the carriage.Back in Brisbee, the two ladies who ran the local boarding house were becoming concerned about Tracinda. She was always in by 10 p.m. and it was an hour past that now. There had been a commotion down the street at the Capricorn Saloon earlier in the evening, and Frenchie McGee, the fiery red-headed mistress of the Serendipity Boarding House, decided to brave the darkness and go in search of her young boarder. She called to her partner, Molly McGuire, to join her. They donned their shawls, grabbed a lantern and went out into the cool, dark night.
Patricia Colleen ("Frenchie") McGee, and Jaqueline Molly McGuire, had come to Brisbee a year earlier, and their boarding house was the finest of any west of the Mississippi. They had met on the stagecoach and learned that each of their families had come from Virginia and Louisiana. The amazing similarity of their names, the common bond of being Southerners, and yet a third coincidence led them to become fast friends.
Both ladies had been fascinated by stories of the wild west and were on their way there to seek new adventures. Frenchie had found a copy of The Brisbee Gazette on the stagecoach. Neither woman had ever heard of Brisbee, but there were many interesting items in the paper, and on the back page was a notice about an abandoned house on Main Street that was to be auctioned the next day on the courthouse steps. The ladies read the article with much interest and decided that fate had had a hand in their meeting. Both being possessed of a daring nature, they agreed to flip a coin. Heads they would get off at Brisbee, which was the next rest stop, and tails they would continue on westward .
Molly flipped the coin. It fell from her hands and dropped to the floor of the coach. It rolled under the boot of a forbidding looking man who was slumped in the seat across from them, and snoring loudly. She reached under his foot with the toe of her shoe and slid the coin out where they could see it. Both women bent over to peer at the coin. It was heads! They would pool their meager savings and try their luck in Brisbee.
The two women walked briskly down the street, passed the general store, and crossed over to the bank. As they approached the Capricorn, Molly nudged Frenchie and told her to stop. She had seen something. She took the lantern and held it closer to the thing that had caught her attention.
She saw a small, lace handkerchief that had been tucked under the reins of a horse which was tied to the hitching post in front of the Capricorn. And ... on the ground, gleaming in the light from the lantern, was a bright object. Molly bent down to pick it up. It was a gold nugget!
The ladies recognized the handkerchief as Tracinda's, and the nugget as the good-luck piece that she carried with her at all times. She would NEVER let go of that nugget! Now Frenchie and Molly were REALLY alarmed. They feared that something frightful had happened to Tracinda.
There was not another minute to waste! They walked quickly past the saloon, crossed the street again, and headed straight for Sheriff McAlister's house. They had to find Tracinda, and the intractable sheriff was just the person to do it!
