The film was produced and directed by Fielder Cook from a screenplay by Sidney Carroll, adapted from their TV play Big Deal in Laredo, which aired on The DuPont Show of the Week in 1962.

When undertaker Tropp calls for them in his horse-drawn hearse, cattleman Henry Drummond forces a postponement of his daughter's wedding, while lawyer Otto Habershaw abandons his closing arguments in a trial, with his client's life hanging in the balance.

They are joined by Wilcox and Buford in the back room of Sam's saloon, while the curious gather outside for occasional reports.

Settler Meredith, his wife Mary and their young son Jackie are passing through, on their way to purchase a farm near San Antonio, when a wheel on their wagon breaks.

With Jackie and four of the players trailing behind, Mary crosses the street and talks to the owner of the Cattle and Merchants' Bank, C. P. Ballinger.

Drummond is so touched that when he returns home to the waiting wedding ceremony, he talks privately to his weak-willed, prospective son-in-law, gives him some money, and orders him to run away and find himself a better wife.

With the help of Scully—who dreams of romance far from the tedium and poverty of a country doctor's life—and at Ballinger's behest, they have perpetrated a scam on the other poker players, who had swindled the banker in a real-estate deal 16 years before.

A foxier bunch of artful poker rascals would be hard to find," crediting Meredith with "perhaps the most memorable performance of the lot".