The freight wagons have CARLSON written on them. Matt Dillon.

It is 1957. J.C. Cullen is a young man from a small town, with a talent for winning at craps, who leaves for the big city to work as a professional gambler. While there, he breaks the bank at a private craps game at the Gem Club, owned by George Cole, and falls in love with two women, one of them Cole's wife.

A man who has a talking mule gets a job on a newspaper, and both get mixed up in a murder trial.