1853 As yet another half-drunken gambler squeezed her behind when she passed him, Jean Grey almost gave into her urge to bring a beer bottle down on his head. It would have been so satisying to smash in his stupid, leering face; to watch his look of dumb, animal lust turn to one of shock. As it was, she settled for slapping away his hand viciously. He yelped in outrage and glared at her, but did not take it any further. It was a good decision, she thought, for his own sake. In her current mood, she was liable to whip out the pistol she kept for protection and shoot him on the spot.

Unlike the painted and perfumed tarts all around her, she didn’t spread her legs at any price. She served drinks, wiped tables, swept floors, even sang on occasion, but she did not entertain the customers in the bedroom. She’d starve on the streets before she’d sell her body to buy bread. She had been very clear about that to her boss when she had signed up for the job. Sure, it meant she got to take home less pay at the end of the month, but it also meant she could look her husband straight in the eye and that was worth more than a few, measly dollars to her.

She had just set a beer down at another table and evaded another groping hand, when one of the whores came up to her. She was a tall, slim woman in a green-and-black dress that looked like it had been painted on her. Chestnut curls tumbled down her shoulders, but there was a freak, white streak in the hair above her forehead. She had noticed her earlier that morning because of it - she had been kissing and canoodling with a young, gentleman gambler whose accent suggested he was from Georgia.

Jean frowned at her in a mixture of confusion and her usual disapproval. There was something wrong about this one that she couldn’t quite place. She just seemed to have too much life in her green eyes, too much pride in the way she carried herself. She was new to the oldest profession or she wasn’t a whore at all. Either way, it wasn’t any of her business.

“Sugah, may Ah have a word with you?” she said, her voice sweeter and smoother than any honey, as she put a hand on Jean’s arm, “Guy up on the stage is lookin’ a bit parched. Shouldn’t you be givin’ him one of those whiskeys or something?”

Angrily, Jean shook herself free from the woman’s grip, “Why is that any of your business?”

The woman gave her a luxurious smile, “But it is mah business. Ah took care of him last night, and he said he’d pay me double if Ah made sure y’all at this saloon took good care of him as well. Ah’m happy to split the profits with you.”

Lifting her skirts, she pulled a thick wad of bills from one of her shiny, lace-up boots. Jean battled to keep her bitterness from showing when she looked at them - she could work all day every day for the next year and she wouldn’t make even a tenth of what the other woman made on her back in one night. The whore peeled off a couple of them and held them out to her.

“I won’t take anything from a whore,” she replied with stiff pride, “You might not care how you make your money, but I do.”

She laughed, “Take it, sugah. All Ah’m asking you to do is take a drink to the Wolverine. That is your job, ain’t it?”

“But . . . .”

“Besides, the money will be useful with that baby on its way.”

Startled, Jean stared at her. She was not even in her third month - a week or two ago, the baby hadn’t been much more than a suspicion. She had looked at herself in the mirror this morning, and she knew she wasn’t showing, “How could you tell?”

“Just could,” she waved the bills enticingly in front of her face, “So, take them. A baby deserves decent things.”

“Okay,” Jean took them with reluctance and tucked them beneath the waistband of her skirt, “But I’m only doing this because it is my job.”

“Wouldn’t ask you to do anything that wasn’t, sugah.”

Rolling her eyes, Kate turned away from the barlady and walked back to rejoin Remy. Of all the weird places to run into a high-and-mighty, pure-and-holy woman like that one! She would have expected her to be holding prayer-meetings at the church or keeping her husband’s house spotless, not serving drinks to a bunch of drunks in a saloon. It was a good thing that she had spotted the way her hand had kept going to her stomach, as if to protect the child from the noise and the dirt and the obscenity that surrounded it. Maternal instinct was the easiest emotion on which to play.

Still, she had managed to slip the drug into all the glasses on her tray. The way she saw it, it didn’t matter if a few gamblers keeled over a few drinks before schedule. She surpressed a smug smile, as she thought back to how easy it had all been. It had been child’s play to distract her with the bills, while she had laced them. She had fetched the packet from her boot at the same time, slit it open with one nail and sprinkled it into the liquid when she hadn’t been looking. It had dissolved colourlessly and almost odourlessly in a matter of moments, just as she had hoped. The stupid barlady hadn’t suspected anything - she’d just pocketed her money and taken the drinks to the Wolverine.

She looked across at the stage, not bothering to hide her interest. There wasn’t a single person in the room who wasn’t casting greedy looks at the pot every few minutes. Jean was holding out the tray to the Wolverine, and he was reaching for a beer with a nod of thanks. He took a long swallow of it, before wiping his mouth dry. This time, Kate couldn’t hide her grin of delight.

Wrapping her arms around Remy’s neck, she nipped him on the earlobe and murmured, “Time for that distraction, sugah.”

“You’re distractin’ enough for any man, cherie,” he whispered back to her, nuzzling into her neck, “But stand back an’ prepare to be amazed. . . .”

Bemused, Kate did as he asked.

His best look of fury coming to his face, Remy leapt to his feet and pounded the table with both fists. The glasses on it trembled and toppled, liquid within them spreading out to darken the wood. Brightly painted chips flew out in all directions, bounced and skittered over the scuffed floor. In an instant, the saloon went silent. Every face in the room turned in his direction. Remy took a deep breath to steady himself, reminding himself that he lived for moments like these and damn well didn’t want to die because of them.

“The man sitting opposite me is a liar, a fraud and a cheat,” his voice trembled with well-bred outrage. Remy was particularly proud of his Georgian gentleman’s accent. He’d lied and cheated his way through Atlanta on the strength of it, not to mention talked his way into the boudoir of more than one high-society belle.

An angry murmur began to rise throughout the room. After a raw amateur with luck on his side, there was nothing gamblers hated more than a cheater. The man Remy had accused got to his own feet, fists balling at his side and an outraged expression on his face. He was a tall, lanky coyote of a man with sandy hair and pale, almost colourless eyes. He had not spoken many words since he had sat at the table with them, and those had been in the soft, measured tones of a man who thought he was saying too much.

“I ain’t a cheat!” he spat, “An’ you can’t prove that I am!”

“Really, sir?”

Dramatically, Remy pushed over the table to reveal cards stashed between the frame and the top of the table. He pulled them out of the hiding-place where he had put them earlier and threw them at the man’s feet with the air of challenging him to a duel, “How do you explain those?”

All the colour drained from the man’s lean face, “I didn’t put ‘em there. I didn’t . . . .”

By now, all the other gamblers had left their seats and were closing on him. Some shouted accusations and threats. Others made their point more effectively by slapping whiskey bottles against their palms. Still others tried to calm the mob and were shoved aside for their troubles. Within seconds, the poker tournament had disintegrated into an all-out brawl. Bottles and glasses flew through the air to smash against walls or heads; furniture splintered as men grabbed it to use as weapons; bodies slammed into the bar or the stage; whores screamed encouragement and got in a few kicks of their own.

In the chaos and noise that surrounded him, Remy looked for Kate and winked at her.

Once in his travels, the Wolverine had been forced to outride a twister. He had been riding through farmland on a strange spring’s day when one had suddenly come up behind him. All morning, the sky above him had been a strange, livid colour halfway between yellow and green, and even the air felt oppressive as if it were pressing down on him. Suddenly, however, dark clouds had turned day to night and strong winds had flattened the corn almost to the ground. He’d looked over his shoulder to see a twister rising in the distance, bringing chaos with it. Crops flew upwards along with the soil in which they had been rooted. Barns disintegrated into boards and spiralled in the air. Tools and farming implement did a crazy dance in the sky. He had ridden his horse to collapse for two hours to get to a nearby farm-house and had beaten his knuckles bloody on the door to the cellar before the farmer had opened it for him and he had divided inside it. Bruised, breathing heavily, he had lain on the cool earth of that cellar’s floor while chaos had swirled around and over him. He felt exactly the same way now - as if he was the only solid, stable point in a world that was being ripped up around him by a twister.

Beneath him, on the floor of saloon, he heard some sort of fight begin. There was the buzz of angry voices, then the unmistakable crash of a table being overturned. Moments later, the brawl began for real, as he heard bottles and wood smashing and men yelping in pain. However, when he tried to see what was happening, all he could make out was a blur of colours that seemed to twist and swirl in front of his eyes.

The drink, he thought with a groan, Someone slipped some sorta drug into it. How could I have been such a damn, tenderfoot fool? I’m the Wolverine, dammit!

Clutching onto the table to steady himself, he tried to get to his feet, but his muscles wouldn’t obey him. Like a newborn calf, his legs gave way beneath him and he collapsed back into his chair.

The money. I gotta protect their money.

He reached out a trembling hand to the brown smudge that he guess was the valise, but it dissolved in front of his eyes and reformed somewhere else on the table. He grabbed for it again and again, but his fingers only closed around thin air.

Goddamnit! Sudden green and black appeared on the edges of his field of vision, and a husky, woodsmoke voice murmured, “Looks like we outsmarted you, you old bastard. Ah’ll be taking the money now.” Her black-gloved hands, wavering like the wings of a blackbird, closed around the elusive valise and lifted it off the table. Anger at his helplessness rising hot within him, Logan fumbled for his pistols at his side, but he could not find them anymore than he had been able to take a hold of the valise. He tried to yell for someone to stop her, but knew his voice was inaudible over the sounds of the bar-fight.

“I’ll get you, bitch,” he said in a low, dangerous voice, “I tracked Creed all the way from Nebraska to California. Wherever you go, I’ll find you. There ain’t nowhere safe from the Wolverine.”

“Creed was an amateur. You’re dealin’ with a professional now,” she replied, “Bye bye, sugah.”

Then, she was gone and the money was gone with her.

As he sat back in his chair, a slow smile spread across the Wolverine’s face. It had been so long since he had a challenge. . . .