When cowboy Mars Peters rode into Gunfighter's Gulch on his spotless appaloosa, he had no idea he would be the spark that would ignite the waiting powder keg.
The keg was placed, inadvertently, by the old prospector Cactus Percival. He used to come into Gunfighter's Gulch now and again from the New Mexico Territory, spending silver like it was gold, and always wearing new boots. But then, one day he didn't come back and in the years since then tales of Cactus Percival's silver stash have grown. Was it a mine, or Spanish silver, or even something more?
And then the fuse was spitted (inadvertently again) when the new schoolmarm, Miss Polly, assigned her children a research paper. The portly Heinricht Von and the unrealistically cute little Marjory are in a race to discover what happened to Cactus Percival and, more importantly, his silver.
A band of outlaws is also in town, led by the desperado Lor' Schulenberg, determined to find a map that was said to have gone down with the 3rd National Bank. A map to Cactus Percival's silver!
All of these, and a few more, are rushing to the old cinder cone west of town, determined to find the treasure of Cactus Percival before anyone else.