What the Cat Dragged In

By Janet Dawson

Hattie Ballew is a gold miner in California’s Mother Lode. She works a claim with her brothers, and enjoys the company of her cat Little Bit, who pilfers things from the cabin and the surrounding woods.

As Hattie finds out in this short story, the lust for gold leads to violence – and murder. And Little Bit may drag in a clue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Janet Dawson
• Release date: Jan 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781944153076

Book preview

What The Cat Dragged In

By Janet Dawson

©1999 Janet Dawson.

Cover by Julia Turner. Photo used under Creative Commons from orchidgalore.

What The Cat Dragged In originally appeared in the anthology Cat Crimes Through Time.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The tiger-striped cat appeared at the edge of the clearing one afternoon while Hattie Ballew was chopping wood. Hattie’s brothers, Ned and Tom, had gone hunting, for the same reason Hattie labored at the wood pile. They needed plenty of fuel and game stored before autumn gave way to winter. Snow had already fallen in the upper elevations of the Sierra Nevada. Days were shorter, and the nights had turned chilly.

Perhaps that was why the cat showed up, seeking more comfortable quarters. To be sure, she looked scrawny, her ribs showing under the brown and black fur. She meowed, beseeching Hattie for something to eat.

The need for a cat came on Hattie, as sharp as the big ax she’d been hefting. It would be nice, she told herself, to have something soft and warm to doze in her lap in the evening.

Hattie set down the ax and went inside the cabin. She scraped the leavings from the pan of stew they’d had at midday into a chipped crockery bowl and