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The premiere episode of Maverick opens with a characteristic grace-note from director Budd Boetticher, in which Bret Maverick (James Garner) rides into the town of Echo Springs, caked with trail dust and dressed in seedy "cowboy" clothes--only to re-emerge a few moments later as the well-groomed, sartorially splendid professional gambler that he is. Before long Bret is playing poker with Phineas King (Edmund Lowe), the owner of a large silver mine. When Bret wins the game, King orders his flunkeys to beat up the gambler and boot him out of town. But Mr. Maverick isn't about to be scared off so easily, especially after finding out that King is systematically cheating the local miners. With the help of an old derelict who turns out to be a judge, Bret turns the tables on the unscrupulous silver king--but not before he has a painful encounter with burly Irishman Big Mike McComb (Leo Gordon in his first series appearance). Played "straight" for the most part, this debut episode was based on the unfilmed Warner Bros. property "War of the Copper Kings", which in turn was inspired by the career of copper speculator F. Augustus Heinze.