Yancy Derringer is a gentleman adventurer and gambler. Widely respected by all parts of New Orleans society as a southerner who never surrendered. He is a former Confederate Army captain who has returned to New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, in the southern Reconstruction Era. Derringer is recruited by the Federal City Administrator, John Colton, to work as a secret agent at no pay; and only Colton knows of his special role.