Late in the winter of 1921 the first oil well in Arkansas, located near the small village of El Dorado, is completed and it’s a gusher. The well kicks off a wild, oil boom which explodes the town’s population from 3800 to 40,000 in less than a year, and in certain sections of town, all semblances of law and order disappear, especially along a street near the railroad station nicknamed Hamburger Row.

Into this boom, along with the crooks, oil men, promoters, lease hounds, and assorted riffraff, comes a remarkable young woman, MASHA ANN CARRINGTON, a beautiful scarlet-haired, former beauty queen. This is her story.

Masha, a poor farm girl, abandoned by her mother as a child, lives with her mentally disturbed father, HOMER CARRINGTON, a lay preacher in a nearby Primitive Baptist Church. She is forced to leave home when her father falsely accuses JIM BLEVINS, a young colored man, of attempted rape. Her father is so distraught he commits suicide. Jim is arrested, taken to a nearby town, and Masha goes to plead his innocence. However, the Klu Klux Klan arrives before she can get there, and they hang Jim and burn his body.

Shocked and bewildered, she flees to El Dorado, penniless. The town is packed with people, and she can’t find a place to stay or a job. As it gets later she becomes frantic and as darkness approaches she sees a prostitute working as a greeter for Jake’s Place, a barrelhouse on Hamburger Row, and she talks to her about finding a place to stay. The madam, SYLVIA TURNAGE, befriends her and Masha spends the night in her bedroom. The next day Masha again searches for a place to stay and a job, but finds nothing. She returns to Jake’s Place, and Sylvia tells her she can work as a greeter, but soon she is forced into prostitution and forbidden to leave. The barrelhouse is owned by the notorious JAKE MULLINS, who, with ruthless gang of hi-jackers, controls that part of El Dorado. Every Saturday night he convenes a high stakes poker game, and by slipping cards in the game from a slotted box under the table, always comes out a winner.

BILLY JOE MCFARLAND, a store clerk, in a nearby town finally succumbs to the lure of riches and joins the boom. He starts working for a crew of derrick builders and meets Masha when the crew goes to Jake’s Place to celebrate finishing a job. Over the next few weeks they fall in love, and he tries to help her leave, but Masha is charging an unheard of $50.00 for her services, and Jake and his gang won’t let her go, unless they can come up with a considerable amount of money.
Bill ends up owning part interest in a 120 acre oil lease by backing one of his crew in a poker game. To get a well drilled they become partners with HAYS BROADAX, a crooked oil promoter, and after a near disaster, the well comes in as a gusher, Bill sells his interest for $12,500, and goes to pay off Jake. However, Jake raises the price he’ll take to let her go, and Bill must raise more money.

He begins to invest the money from the sale of the well, and at first he is unsuccessful. Then he buys into a well that looks like the opportunity of a lifetime, and when the drilling reaches the pay zone everyone is certain they are going to make a fabulous well, and the well begins to come in, but it’s gas, not oil, and the gas pressure is so great it causes a blowout, destroys the rig killing three men, and blows out of control creating a huge crater. Bill’s one eighth interest in the well means he must pay one eighth of the cost, and the huge debt instantly bankrupts him. He’s a broken man and he quits the oil fields.  Depressed, and now without any hope to get Masha out of the barrelhouse, he goes back home to work as a store clerk.

Masha knows the well has bankrupted Bill, and after he disappears, she attempts suicide, but Sylvia intervenes at the last moment.

Bill, after working in his father’s dry goods store for three months, is depressed and has given up hope of ever seeing Masha again, but his father, aware of his depression, gives him a new stake of $2500, and he goes back to El Dorado to start over.

By playing poker, getting confidential information on the oil fields from an alcoholic geologist, and seducing an attractive widow, who owns unleased acreage in a big oil field, Bill slowly builds up his income, and he knows, with Masha’s money, and with the help of her friend, Sylvia, the madam, they can pay Jake what he wants. However, Masha has become so popular that she’s now known as The Queen of Hamburger Row, and Jake, whose behavior has become more and more irrational, becomes obsessed with her to the point that he elaborately decorates a room with a heart-shaped red velvet bed, raises her price to a $100, and refuses to let her go.

Sylvia tries to convince Jake to let Masha leave, but after an argument in Jake’s room, he kills her and throws her body in a nearby alley. Masha knows Jake killed Sylvia, and, because he has paid off the local police, she must go to Little Rock to alert the Federal Marshals. She escapes through a restroom window and slips on board a train thinking she’s free, but in Camden, 30 miles away, one of Jake’s men boards the train and takes her back to El Dorado. Jake gives Masha Sylvia’s job as madam, and alludes that soon she’ll become his girlfriend. He threatens her and tells her he knows about her relationship with Bill, and if she crosses him, he’ll have him killed.

Bill finds out that Jake’s gang is responsible for many of the robbery-murders on Hamburger Row, and he comes up with a way to dispose of the gang where Masha will be free to leave. His derrick building crew stage a fake poker game in the back room of the saloon and one of their crew comes out of the game with a lot of cash. He’s the bait, and when he starts back uptown the hi-jackers will be waiting for him in the alley just up the street from Jake’s Place. However, Bill and his crew have rented a room over-looking the alley and Bill’s four men will ambush the gang of murders when they come to the alley.

That same night Bill joins Jake’s big poker game, knowing that Masha, who has found out about Jake’s slotted box under the table, has switched Jake’s aces with deuces. The ambush by Bill’s crew kills all but one of the gang because Jake tells the leader of the gang, JABO BARNES, to stay and bring Masha to his room after the poker game. The showdown poker hand comes up and Bill makes a huge bet which Jake calls, thinking he has the winning hand, when he actually has only a pair of deuces. Bill wins the hand, but Jake is enraged, and using fake deputy sheriff’s credentials, orders Jabo to arrest Bill and take him to his house through the tunnel which connects Jake’s Place to the basement of his house where he intends to kill them. He brings Masha along and the four of them end up in the basement of Jake’s house. Jake sends Jabo back in the tunnel, saying he can take care of Bill and Masha. They try to pay off Jake, but he tells them he’ll have their money anyway. As he starts to shoot Bill, Masha pulls her concealed stiletto knife, that she carries in her boot, and stabs Jake. However, he manages to turn toward her and pulls the trigger. She’s wounded, Jake falls to the floor, dying, and Bill snatches up Jake’s pistol as Jabo rushes back in the room. He shoots Jabo twice, but instead of falling, Jabo throws the coal oil lantern across the room into a stack of trash, and manages to get a death grip on Bill’s throat. Bill drops his gun and it seems Jabo will kill him, but Masha manages to pick up the gun and puts the barrel against Jabo’s head. The bullet blows off the top of his head, he relaxes his grip on Bill’s throat, and they fall to the floor. The basement is ablaze, Jake and Jabo are both dead, and Bill is stunned—gasping for breath. Masha is unable to pull him to safety, but finally Bill recovers enough to get them out of the basement and into the tunnel. The fire rushes down the tunnel after them into the basement of Jake’s Place, and both buildings begin to burn. Masha shows Bill the back door out of Jake’s Place, they escape, and Bill carries Masha to the Garrett Hotel while Jake’s Place and Jake’s house burn to the ground.

Dr. Parker treats Masha and assures them she’ll recover. She leans back, relieved to be out of Jake’s Place, smiles, and thinks, Now I can talk to the man I love as long as I want and nobody will tell me to stop and circulate.