Two former partners, John McIntire as Bannon and Howard Duff as Pete Menlo, once ran a mining operation in the rough strike town of Goldfield. One man runs the Fandango, a blend of saloon, casino and brothel, while the other handles mining advice and manages the claims the casino uses as security against bets. The town's regular gambler Jackpot Wray, William Demarest, and his daughter Nevada Wray, Mala Powers, anchor the social and economic tension, with Nevada serving as the ore assayer and becoming the love interest.
After buying up a mine stake, the partners strike it rich, but their miners are drawn away by a better pay offer from Bannon. A street confrontation with one of his hired guns escalates into a full-blown price war. Neither mine can keep mule drivers loyal enough to transport the ore to the smelter, stalling cash flow and turning the town into a tense showdown. The partners plot to ship a load out of town, but their lawyer betrays them to Bannon (a continuity quirk concerns the scale of ore wagons for the number of horses). The wagons are bushwhacked by Bannon's men outside town and crash, leaving Lex Barker as Andy Martin unconscious and left to die in the desert, only to be found by a passer-by and brought back into town.
As Martin returns, a mine cave-in traps three men, and while workers struggle to free them, Menlo and Bannon discuss a potential railway deal that would give a statewide magnate a 50% stake in the town’s mines. Martin arrives and misreads a supposed double cross, dissolving the partnership—and the romance—when there wasn’t one to begin with. In a casino showdown, Martin wins Jackpot's mine, but an obscure mining law reveals that the rights are controlled by the owner of Jackpot's mine, now Martin. The lawyer is run out of town, and Menlo tries to buy the mine back through Jackpot, only to discover it now truly belongs to Martin. This prompts Menlo to push deeper, and he is attacked by Bannon's hoodlums and dragged to a meeting where Bannon also tries to buy the mine. Martin, Nevada and Jackpot sense that something is amiss, work the mine and uncover high-quality ore that could control the entire area’s strikes, all while being watched by one of the hoodlums.
Bannon wants to kill the prospectors, but Menlo argues against it. After a physical confrontation, Menlo is knocked unconscious and Bannon and his men hurry to the claims registration office to block registration. A gunfight erupts, in which the hoodlums are killed, and Menlo reappears just in time to prevent Bannon from killing Jackpot. In the end, the partnership saga resolves with a final clash between the two original partners, a moment that nods back to a wry echo of Gilligan's Island, and closes on a note of uneasy peace.
