In 1973 Pete Livermore returns from service in Vietnam, and lands a cadetship with the Cairns Post. After months of court reports and sports articles the editor, Brian Grayling, gives Pete a special assignment. Heading north by boat, he lands at a remote Cape York waterway called the Wild Dog River. His job is to write a story on a camp of itinerants, many of them veterans, commanded by a scheming larrikin called Nolan.

The initially warm reception soon turns cold, however, and Pete is told to leave. Before he does, a boy offers him the chance to buy a small bronze relic, found in the river's upper reaches, and inscribed with a Chinese triad 'war dragon.' The purchase sets off a sequence of murder, victimisation, incarceration, and ultimately escape.

The story delves back a century into the past, to a Chinese 'Red Pole' in the Sheathed Sword Society, and a hoard of gold that was lost en route from the Palmer River Goldfields to China. Pete, on the run from wrongful imprisonment, sets out to clear his name, gathering allies where he can. Every resource will be needed and tested when he faces up to the people of the Wild Dog River, and their lust for a lost treasure.