Cat's Paw — Patrick Maher

The boarding house stood on the edge of Boulder, itscorrugated iron roof catching the last rays of sunlightlike copper pennies. It was a place of openness andhonesty in a hard world, an island sanctuary amongstthe poppet heads and rusty iron that defined the gold‐fields. Here, the Butler family kept their doors open tominers, drifters, and dreamers-anyone who needed abed and a warm meal in the unforgiving desert land‐scape of Western Australia.It was into this world, in April of 1926, that murderwould come. But the seeds of that murder had beenplanted years before, in the mud of France, where goodmen had learned the price of survival.