Diego's photographic experiment after Joseph Eeps is a bright failure, twice. Señor Casey Hawkes' gold transport worth 6000 pesos for the Spanish colonies to the north, where Russians must be kept away, is raided by Indians; although Diego remarks their arrows are unknown, a bounty is awarded on every Indian's head. When Zorro saves some innocent local Indians, Hawkes' men attempt to apprehend him, only to be delivered to jail themselves; the alcalde quickly releases them. With Victoria's help, Zorro searches Hawkes' room at her inn and follows him to his gang

The alcalde is delighted with an invitation for a birthday party at the inn with the nobility, but Mendoza got one too, while don Diego and don Alejandro doubt if the alcalde really throws a birthday party for Mendoza. Yet they all go and are, with Victoria, knocked down and tied up with a lighted fuse to a powder keg by Ricardo Quintana, who spent eight months in prison where his partner in crime (see the previous episode "The Unhappy Medium") Myatana died.