Four years earlier, Nick Barkley found himself once again riding out an infectious wolf bite, to see if he would survive, far from home, in the care of a widow and her young son, with whom Nick had struck up a fast friendship. This time Nick had advanced knowledge of something that was soon to happen. One night in the city, Nick and his girlfriend would be attacked by two gunmen. In the first timeline, his girlfriend had been shot, and Nick had asked a two towel priest to marry them on her deathbed, to give the son a Barkley name.

This time Nick surprised both outlaws and married the widow, inspired to make the time trip after comparing his situation to Jarrod’s. He retained ownership of the Barkley ranch, but left the day to day running to Heath, who trained others to take over in the year that Heath was ready to move out of the Valley as the new timeline unfolded.

So it was that James West and Artemus Gordon found themselves alone in the Barkley living room, no longer tied up. They were about to go in search of Dr Loveless’s guest room at the Barkley Mansion, when back into the room walked Audra Barkley, the tall slender attractive daughter of Miguelito’s alternate earth fiancé.

“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Mother before, but I can understand your concerns about Miguelito,” said Audra, “Maybe I could help you to take him by surprise. Would you mind if we had some tea, so that you could tell me of his crimes in detail first?”

Artemus recalled his promise to the previous timeline’s Nick and Jarrod to be gentle with the Barkley women in the pursuit of their duty. Both he and Jim decided to at least humour the girl. Audra prepared three cups of tea, brought them into the room on a tray and sat at the living room table. Jim and Artemus drank heartily and began to recount the details of their first encounter with Miguelito Loveless.

Suddenly West and Gordon found themselves shrinking to tiny size.

“How did she do that?” asked Jim, “We never even got up to telling her what happened on the Night of the Raven?”

“Dr Loveless told me about his inventions,” said Audra, “Even Mother doesn’t know that I asked him for some supplies of some of them, which he naturally gave me in order to keep his fiance’s daughter on side. I can’t let you two take away Mother’s happiness. You’ll never even know whether the shrinking formula was in the tea or administered to you in some other way.”

Towering like a giantess, Audra Barkley walked over and closed a dainty long slender hand around each of President Grant’s special agents, took them quietly to her bedroom and put them onto the pillow.

“Now all I need is a suitably sized cage,” said Audra, and got up and walked over to a set of shelves, “Miguelito’s antidote to your condition is up here, by the way, but you’ll never reach it. Besides, in a moment you’ll be caged.”

“The relative giantess walked over in her elegant light blue dress, carrying a cage, and sat on the bed beside them, and placed the cage on the pillow.

“You’d both be wise to go in peacefully,” she said.