Burke Thomas is a free-wheeling private investigator of valuables from long past and a part-time treasure hunter. Conned into kidnapping a young woman, Burke discovers that the client who hired him is dead before he gets a chance to free her. Now he's got a gang pursuing him, the local sheriff asking embarrassing questions, and, worst of all, he was only vacationing in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California in hopes of finding a long-buried, massive hoard of ingot gold. About the only thing he's dead certain of is that this trouble is far more than he bargained for.