(will move post if others prefer to post in-between)<br/><br/>Reentering the saloon and shutting the doors behind herself, Katie nods in appreciation at the saloon keeper.  "I'd be much obliged, sir..."  she sets her sights on a small table by the wall, sits at the chair and lifts her hat from her head.  Her black hair beneath is plaited and pinned where the hat had covered, except for a few tendrils that had spilled free and still hung aside her face.  Her one natural eye pans from Alex, to whom she gives a reassuring nod, to the others one by one.<br/><br/>"I don't aim to meddle with the law," she said steadily, her voice even and devoid of hostility.  "I don't aim to meddle with none of you all's affairs, neither."  She leans forward on the spindly wooden chair, and the wood creaks a bit.  "But I mean to find out what's befell this town."<br/><br/>If the saloon keeper goes to fetch the food, she'll proceed in a lowered tone.  "Now I'm not gonna play peekaboo with y'all about this, and I ain't gonna be coy.  I have it on good authority--" her eye flicks over to Alex for a brief, assertive glance, "--that we are not simply... well, not like others."  Her hand seems to hang loose and relaxed at her knee, but in a moment it could snare her pistol and let fly.  "All of us here are not like others... sort of in the same way."<br/><br/>That sentence sounds awkward, hanging out there like it is.  "I've killed a man who was<i>something</i>like what we are before, and it weren't easy, but he was as fucked up and evil as anything I've seen."  She pauses, tips her head in apology toward the Celestial and her companion.  "Beggin' yer pardon."<br/><br/>She continues.  By now, her accent's easy to place as Missourian.  "If any of you are of a similar disposition to the kind of malicious deed that HE was, then I'd like to know it.  Otherwise..."  she clears her throat softly.  "Otherwise, if what Alex says is true, then it might be we'd best work together."  She thinks about that for a moment, about the implication.  "Supposing, that is, that... well, that we're all on the same page here, about finding out what's harrying these folks."  She sniffs and looks a bit mollified at having even brought it all up.