Trama

A gambler and a prostitute become business partners in a remote Old West mining town, and their enterprise thrives until a large corporation arrives on the scene.

Set in winter in the Old West. Charismatic but dumb John McCabe arrives in a young Pacific Northwest town to set up a whorehouse/tavern. The shrewd Mrs. Miller, a professional madam, arrives soon after construction begins. She offers to use her experience to help McCabe run his business, while sharing in the profits. The whorehouse thrives and McCabe and Mrs. Miller draw closer, despite their conflicting intelligences and philosophies. Soon, however, the mining deposits in the town attract the attention of a major corporation, which wants to buy out McCabe along with the rest. He refuses, and his decision has major repercussions for him, Mrs. Miller, and the town.—John J. Magee <magee@helix.mgh.harvard.edu>

It's the turn of the nineteenth into twentieth century. John McCabe, who largely lives off what he is able to win in gambling, has just rode into the relatively new mining town of Presbyterian Church, nestled in the mountains of Washington. He is an intimidating figure to most of the men in town, in large part because of his quiet bravado and the belief they have that he is a gunslinger who recently killed a man. With his money, McCabe opens up some businesses catering to the men in town, including a whorehouse and bathhouse, the former which he sets up with a trio of cheap hookers he purchased from nearby Bear Paw. Shortly thereafter, cockney Brit Constance Miller also arrives into town, she, a whore herself, who makes a proposition to McCabe that she run the whorehouse and bathhouse to her exacting high standards on a fifty/fifty partnership basis with him, a proposition which McCabe eventually accepts. Mrs. Miller is able to make a successful go at the businesses despite her penchant for opium, of which McCabe is unaware. The businesses are so successful that the Harrison Shaughnessy mining company sends two of its representatives to Presbyterian Church to buy all McCabe's holdings in town. McCabe turns them down before he learns from much more streetwise Mrs. Miller that there is a steeper price to pay for going against Harrison Shaughnessy. As such, McCabe may have to use those gunslinging skills he purportedly possesses not only to save his and Mrs. Miller's businesses, but his life as well.—Huggo

In the early 1900s, John McCabe - poker player and reputed gunfighter - arrives in a small mining and lumber town in the Pacific Northwest and decides to open a saloon and bordello. He acquires some girls - the cheaper he could find - but is soon joined by Constance Miller who offers to run the girls and the bordello for him. She quickly proves to be the brains of the partnership and the business is a money-maker - which gets the interest of Eugene Sears and Ernie Hollander who want to buy him out. McCabe decides to to bargain for a better price but the potential buyers just walk out and send in their gunmen to kill him.—garykmcd

North West United States, late-1800s. Businessman John McCabe has set himself up in a small, growing town. He is building a large saloon and has started a brothel. One day Mrs Miller arrives and suggests they form a partnership - she'll run the brothel while he provides the capital. The new venture is a success but soon a large mining company arrives and wants to buy him out. The bosses of this company don't take kindly to their offers being refused.—grantss