Sally Gantt is a twenty-two-year-old woman from rural Alabama. She and her husband, Jim, are chicken farmers. Jim isn’t very hardworking, and Sally often tends to the animals herself. One day, Jim has just left for town when a mangy cat runs into the kitchen and hisses at Sally. She throws firewood at it until scampers out of the door. After calming down, Sally walks to the woods to meet up with Bob. He’s a twenty-year-old engineer from out of town, with whom Sally is having an affair. Bob plans to move to Texas and look for a new job, and he wants Sally to run away with him. However, she’s scared to leave Jim. Bob gives Sally a bottle of corn whiskey. He tells her to get Jim drunk and sneak away once he’s knocked out. They plan to meet in the same spot at midnight. When Sally returns to the house, she finds the cat crouched on the bed. She flies into a fury and throws a shoe at it just as it lunges at her. The shoe makes contact, and the cat runs out. At suppertime, Jim comes back from his errand. He mentions that he killed a diamond-back rattlesnake and left it in the yard. He plans to skin it in the morning. Suddenly, the cat bounds in and jumps onto Jim’s lap. Sally begs him to kill it, but Jim refuses and pets the animal lovingly. Sally opens the cupboard in which she stored the liquor and storms out of the room. Jim raises a toast to the cat and downs most of the bottle. That night, Jim and Sally sleep outside due to the heat. The cat drags the rattlesnake onto the porch. Near midnight, Sally awakes with a start and accidentally jams her wrist into the snake’s poisonous rattler. She panics and calls out to Jim, but he is in an unresponsive stupor. A new day dawns and a worried Bob goes to the Gantt’s house. Once outside, he sees a drunken Jim, a dead Sally, and a grinning cat.