When a Harvard-educated aspiring actor loses all of his cash during a bus-ride poker game, he finds himself stranded in Abilene, Texas, broke and desperate. Enter Merle Luskey, a hard-drinkin', tough-talkin', oil-drillin', woman-lovin' wild-catter who just happens to have a job opening. About to lose his oil rigs and his ranch to the bank, Merle has a proposition for his new friend: he needs a 'rat killer,' someone smart enough to help him outwit the bank, the sheriff, and a rival drilling company in a frantic race to hit pay dirt before the foreclosure goes through.

What ensues is a rip-roaring conflagration of unbelievably vibrant characters, including a drunken cattle rancher who owns the land that Merle wants to drill on and also owns every issue of Playboy ever published, speaking so fondly about the centrefolds you'd think they were kin. And meet Tex-Ann, a busty gum-snapping blonde imported from Dallas to-ahem-persuade the cattle rancher to sign on the dotted line.