Man, myth, devil, or angel: who-what was Joaquin Murieta? Thought dead these many years, Joaquin's ghostly voice echoes through the night, "I am Joaquin. You will remember my name!" She is Heller Petyon, a Boston blueblood, rescued by her aunt from the slums of New York. She has come to San Francisco on a special excursion train to promote commerce and culture and to prove that in spite of her sordid past, she is every inch a proper lady. He is Joaquin Murieta, El Bandido Notorio, disguised as a Spanish aristocrat. He has come to San Francisco to search the saloons of the Barbary Coast and the opium dens of Chinatown for the man who murdered his beloved wife. There seems no common ground between them; Heller with her puritanical principles and Joaquin with none. Out of the pages of history rides a ghost from California's past, the legendary bandit, Joaquin Murieta, who shows Heller the way of the Midnight Trail, and of a love greater than that of the heart-the love of a dream, of a cause, and of a people!