... that explores human nature and all its warts, and in particular, greed. Not the kind of greed you see in criminals who will shoot you dead if you don't hand over the money, but the kind of greed exhibited by everyday folk who would like to think of themselves as moral.
Shanks is having a hard time making his cattle ranch profitable. His alleged "friend" who leased him the land his ranch sits on evicts him from his place for non payment of rent. His wife leaves him for another "friend" because she thinks him a failure and doesn't want to follow him to Colorado. Still another "friend" buys his remaining cattle from him for half of what they are worth, and then only gives him half of that.
Shanks, picked clean by all of this fraternity and friendship, goes to Colorado to try his hand at mining. A drifter passes through, Quimby (Buddy Ebsen), they begin conversing, and Shanks comes up with a plan that can get him a ranch, cattle, and more without any physical labor and actually without breaking the law. For some reason he asks Quimby to go in for half the profit, without knowing anything about him. After he has been taken by all of his so called friends I found that odd.
So Shanks returns to Dodge City with bags and bags of "gold" (they are actually just sand"). He puts the bags into the bank's safe. He intentionally lets word spread far and wide among the townsfolk about his new found fortune. Of course this news spreads to his three former "friends" as well as his ex wife, and he lets their greed do the rest. How does their greed do the rest? Watch and find out.
Buddy Ebsen gives a great performance of the one true and probably the least carefully chosen of Shanks' friends. I'd like to think that this spot on performance helped him get the role of Jed Clampett the following year, but I don't really know. I'd highly recommend this episode of Gunsmoke.