Broderick Crawford is the wealthy rancher/villain who does not want to hang after being convicted of murder.
His best friend is the master of bad acting, Chill Wills. Great at portraying one-dimensional characters. Here he plays Crawford's best friend, and the somewhat corrupt town sheriff.
Crawford's sons are played by equally bad actors Hampton Fancher and Paul Carr. They are the one-diminsional protective sons who want to kill the hired hangman (Burgess Meredith) and the drovers.
Burgess Meredith is the "special request hangman" that is sent because nobody else wants to do the job. Meredith's broken neck is forever bent and shaky because he survived a lynching once. Since then, his life has been dedicated to properly hanging criminals, so they won't survive.
Just a totally ridiculous story that goes off the rails. The rancher's sons try to kill off Meredith three times, and the drovers keep rescuing him, and healing him back to health.
Meredith just keeps telling Wishbone all the reasons he cannot quit, regardless of how much trouble he is causing everyone. Meredith keeps getting on his horse to go back to town, because he would rather die than not do his job.
Meredith explains to anyone that will listen that he is willing to die because his family died because of him. The only thing that has meaning in his life is hanging criminals. Bizarre story about a creepy weirdo trying to hang an arrogant wealthy rancher, so he can feel good about himself. This should have been one episode.
The acting is worth a few laughs. I always enjoyed Meredith because he specialized in strange and bizarre characters. He was on the Twilight Zone a few times as a weirdo.
He was previously on Rawhide in an episode called "The Fishes" where he was a man who abandoned his wife so he could travel with his beloved tropical fish and put them into new lakes and ponds so they would spread. Just like in this episode, Meredith's character creates mayhem for everyone, and he couldn't care less. It was only about him.