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A poor but feisty Chinese woman, disguised as a boy, joins the railroad crew in the Rocky Mountains to search for her long-lost father, and falls in love with the son of the railroad tycoon.

In 1882, Alfred Nichol, owner of the Nichol Railway Company, is building a railroad through the Canadian Rockies, a project which needs to be completed in a year or else the bank will foreclose on the company's loan. Alfred sends his irresponsible playboy son, James Nichol, to Hong Kong to check on the company's recruitment of Chinese laborers to work on construction of the railroad. Their Hong Kong recruitment agent, Lionel Relic, is a man who has indulged in life. Assisting Relic and James is a young orphan boy named Little Tiger. Unknown to either Relic or James, Little Tiger is actually a young woman masquerading as a boy to eke out a better living for herself. Working in a firecracker factory, she learns the finer details of working with explosives. Their recruitment work is made all the more difficult because of some local gang lords. Despite not seeing Little Tiger as one of the heavy laborers due to his young age and slight build, James does decide to bring Little Tiger back to Canada because of personal circumstances. Little Tiger is desperate to get to Canada to find her father, who is missing and presumed dead in Canada. Once working on the railroad, Little Tiger's explosives knowledge comes in handy and earns the respect of the other men, including James. Little Tiger is also told by the other Chinese laborers not to get too close to James, since ultimately the white see the Chinese as nothing more than cheap, dispensable labor. But Little Tiger's feelings for the boss' son becomes more than that of just friends.

Despite his first instinct being to send her back to China, James decides to let Little Tiger stay in Canada after he finds out that she is really not a boy but a young woman. Beyond wanting to be with James, Little Tiger is happy to be able to make some money and to be able to look for her father. Quickly, James falls in love with Little Tiger, as she had done with him a long time earlier. Beyond the issue of forbidden love because of racial differences, this relationship causes many problems. First, no one but James knows of Little Tiger's true gender. And second, Alfred wants James to marry Melanie Grant, one of James' previous conquests, if only to be able to have a known secure source of financing through her banker father. But Little Tiger also has to deal with the individual personalities of the crew, some of whom don't like her, especially as she stumbles onto some hidden information. It becomes particularly dangerous for her as she gets assigned to the explosives crew.