1897 - the last great gold rush! More than a hundred thousand raced toward the Yukon and the Klondike - all of them desperate to be first to arrive at the headwaters of the Yukon. Leaving his federal post in Montana, U.S. Deputy Marshall Patrick Kelly becomes a partner in a spectacular enterprise: the disassembly and transportation of Studdsworth P. Blackmore's famous Alhambra gambling casino to Dawson City so the gold stampeders will be able to spend their new wealth in magnificent luxury. When the ship on which he is travelling founders off the Alaskan coast, newspaper reporters give Kelly his nickname.

Jack McGowan and his beautiful daughter Lila, aboard their floating gambling palace, the Faro's Daughter, provide a formidable challenge to Shipwreck Kelly and his partners. With a spring thaw setting in on the waterways of the North, the desperate race to be first to the headwaters of the Yukon is on. Cree Indian Louis LeMo and the bateaux men on the Yukon might swing the balance in Kelly's favor.