A panegyric, in approximately equal parts, to the joys of licit sex and high hopes, back in 1859 when Pike's Peak was more than just the highest mountain in Colorado. Ike Bender sets out to join his gold-hunting brother with just a homemade wheelbarrow and five bucks, but a couple months later, due to honesty, the love of a tough woman, but mainly deus ex machina, he strikes a lode big enough to buy up half Denver City and end this book. It's all good fun, if you can read the Dale Carnegie-Horatio Alger morality of positive living and clean thinking without barfing.