Judith Sanford is the sole heiress ofBlue Lake Ranch that is worth a million-dollars but one of her own employees is plotting to swindle her. With the help of Bud Lee, a horse foreman, she is determined to figure out the mystery and put an end to the scheme.However, Bud Lee has his own vested interest in helping Judith! Excerpt: "Bud Lee, horse foreman of the Blue Lake Ranch, sat upon the gate of the home corral, builded a cigarette with slow brown fingers, and stared across the broken fields of the upper valley to the rosy glow above the pine-timbered ridge where the sun was coming up. His customary gravity was unusually pronounced. "If a man's got the hunch an egg is bad," he mused, "is that a real good and sufficient reason why he should go poking his finger inside the shell? I want to know!" Tommy Burkitt, the youngest wage-earner of the outfit and a profound admirer of all that taciturnity, good-humor, and quick capability which went into the make-up of Bud Lee, approached from the ranch-house on the knoll. "Hi, Bud!" he called. "Trevors wants you. On the jump." Lee watched Tommy coming on with that wide, rocking gait of a man used to much riding and little walking. The deep gravity in the foreman's eyes was touched with a little twinkle by way of greeting."

Jackson Gregory (1882-1943) was an American teacher, journalist, and writer. He was born in California and was educated at the University of California, Berkeley. He began his career as a newspaper reporter in San Francisco. He later served as a principal at a high school in Truckee. He authored more than 40 fiction novels and a number of short stories. Several of his tales were used as the basis of films released between 1916 and 1944, including The Man from Painted Post. He was one of theAmerica's successful and prolific authors in the first half of the 20th century. Though the vast majority of his stories were about the American Old West, he did occasionally venture into other genres, like mysteries, fantasies or South Seas adventures. His writing formula was usually a successful combination of an abundance of action, adventure and suspense coupled with a dependable story line about areas and the life he was familiar with in the American Southwest.