In the notorious colony of outlaws on Halfaday Creek, every newcomer draws his name out of a tin can, and old Cush at the saloon keeps more money in his safe than most banks ever see. Tough, cagey Black John Smith maintains law and order in the district, and in dispensing justice he never forgets the value of money. In this high-spirited, action-loaded series of stories about the Yukon-Alaska border country, he manages to rake in a profit with every adventure. He foils a plot dreamed up by as mean a gang of crooks as ever stacked a deck, exchanging twenty-five thousand dollars in fake bills for good ones; he runs a pair of swindlers out of town, after persuading them to leave their cash behind, in his name; and he doubles the twenty thousand he paid for some sacks of fool’s gold, and hangs a murderer in the bargain.