The
lead character is a former riverboat gambler turned banker, using a
start-up fund of winnings and discovery of an abandoned Confederate gold
cache at the end of the Civil War. As the war neared the end, the gold
was intended to bolster the beleaguered southern forces. The funds could
have prolonged the embittered battles in the “war between the states,” a
term not much used at the time. Instead, northern forces called it the
“War of Rebellion,” while southern counterparts termed it the “War for
Southern Independence.” Foreign references labeled the conflict “War of
Secession.”
Clashes
with drunken cowboys aboard a train, staving off a stagecoach hold-up, a
shootout with villainous holdovers from the bloodthirsty Quantrill’s
Raiders, saving a child from drowning, thwarting a bank robbery and
working in a cattle drive threatened by a coalition of farmers are some
of the ingredients that were a part of settling the west as trains and
telegraph began replacing stagecoaches and Pony Express counterparts.
The ingredients are descriptive of the many problems that faced the
country’s pioneers in the rugged “winning of the west.” Once again, the
author relies on actual places and things to enhance the overall
fictional saga. As the years pass, the story culminates with the 1906
San Francisco earthquake.