They are four hired guns who haul freight for a price into the treacherous, untamed wilderness. As tough and unyielding as the land itself, they've already risked their lives for the Confederacy. Now they're fighting for themselves - and for a stake in the future - on the great frontier. Led by the poker-playing Faro Duval, these soldiers of fortune are about to take the biggest gamble of all: delivering an explosive cargo from Santa Fe to southwestern Utah. Their destination is Devil's Canyon... and a mountain of gold.

But there's a wild card in the crew: a man who is one jump ahead of an unsavory past and one piece of silver away from selling them out. In a land of savage outlaws and hostile Utes, with a rattlesnake named Hal Durham in their midst, Duval and his men are running out of time and out of luck. All they have on their side is a load of dynamite... and a matchless courage that will reverberate across the unblazed Western trails...