It happens the day Harry Macarthur turns twenty-seven and decides to shave off his whiskers. Rinsing his face in cold water by his croft in the Oregon hills, the Scots gold-rush caterer finds an egg-shaped 'stone'. Under its green, weed-covered shell it turns out to be a nugget of pure gold. Which he buries for future rainy days. But someone else has other ideas... ideas that later cost his native American wife her life. Their son, Scott, grows up to become the local sheriff with a mission to get justice if not vengeance. Will he find his mother's killer? His journey seems to be without end...