Steve Ballard was known to Sergeant Preston and his famed dog King as a decent sort of fellow, despite the fact that he worked in a Dawson gambling house. In fact, Sergeant Preston had come to depend on him for tips on suspicious characters and crooks who drifted through the place. The Sergeant had been on patrol in the back country for a month. When he returned to Dawson, he heard that Steve had quit his job on order of the doctor. Preston and his dog made his way over to the cheap rooming house where Steve and his wife lived to find out what was the problem.