It was one of the neatest swindles of all time, and it looked foolproof. The scheme was simple: find a rich gold mine with a greedy superintendent, bribe him to report only half the mined gold, convert the stolen half into cash, and buy control of the company's stock. By the time the theft was uncovered, the company would have changed hands. The one element overlooked in the plan: chief mining engineer and troubleshooter Ghost Merrill. Merrill was an unusually capable man, but he soon found himself fighting a lonesome battle.