Lily Viner's father was a hard man, a claim-jumper and petty highwayman working out of Virginia City, Nevada Territory, but he was all the family she had. So when a stagecoach robbery goes bad, and he is killed in the shootout, she is left completely alone. But it is Lily's good fortune that the robbery was planned by the strange Irish outlaw known as King Callahan, who sees in her the sister he left behind and who refuses to leave her to the mercy of the citizens of Virginia City. King Callahan is a criminal, but he's a man with a mission as well. He hates the railroads, he hates the men who build them, and he believes that if the Southern Pacific succeeds in building a line across the desert into Los Angeles, it will be the end of the gracious Spanish colonial city that he has made his home. He intends to do everything in his power to stop the railroad.