This true adventure begins in the late 1800s in the rough-and-tumble towns of northern California and ends on the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1920s. After running away from home, Douglas McHardie found himself in Arizona, where things took a horrible turn for the worse as he found himself wanted for murder, thus beginning his life on the run as an outlaw. From Arizona he escaped to the Canadian gold mines of the Yukon where he found gold. With his new-found riches he moved to San Francisco and opened a saloon, only to have it destroyed by the great earthquake of 1906. McHardie's sense of adventure, however, was not destroyed, and his journey continued to Australia, Bombay, and Afghanistan, where he ran guns between the Gulf States and Kabul and was later tortured. This is a compelling memoir of a survivor, a man whose wits, instincts, and good luck kept him one step in front of the law and alive to tell his story.