One incident from Logan's early 20's, or early teens, occurred somewhere in a bar in a small isolated town in the Rocky Mountains. It was his first battle with Victor Creed. (Wolverine #10). Creed already knew about Logan when they first battled. Logan had not had any real training in hand-to-hand combat at this point.

It was the night of his birthday (or at least in late May, which is when Logan will later believe his birthday to be - Official Marvel Index to the X-Men Vol. I #5), and Logan had plans to celebrate it with his lover, Silver Fox. Sabretooth brutally attacks Silver Fox, apparently raping her and leaving her for dead; Logan apparently witnesses at least part of this attack, and the experience traumatizes him severely, a trauma that the Team X Project will later use as a basis for many of his memory implants.

Creed, confident there would be no reprisals, did not attempt to conceal his responsibility. "Happens, boy. Especially to squaws uppity enough to say no." Creed stood at the bar, licking the dead woman's blood from his fingers, as if daring Logan to do something about it.

"Take me on," Logan said. "It ends when one of us is dead. No matter what it takes, or how long." The crowd stood back, believing that to challenge Creed was as good as committing suicide. Creed himself fully expected Logan to back down as many of his would-be challengers had bone.

Yet, Logan leapt at Creed, pummeling him to the ground. Creed, apparently unhurt, threw Logan off him into the bar itself. Creed was astonished and pleased. He did not expect Logan to show such courage. The two combatants crash out a window into the snowdrifts outside. Seizing a makeshift wooden club, Creed knocked Logan into a woodpile, which then collapsed on top of him. Triumphantly, Creed began clearing away the debris to find Logan's corpse. All he found, though, was blood staining the snow. Logan had somehow gotten away. Creed grinned - this hunt was proving to be much more enjoyable than he had imagined.

Logan was at the brink of utter despair, shivering with cold, agonized by pain from bloody wounds his healing factor had not healed yet. He had thought himself unbeatable, but had now found a superior foe. Thus, for the first time in his life, he was overwhelmed with stark fear. He had faced his own mortality.

Unable to bear this defeat, Logan leaves the frontier community, apparently never to return; he will not see his and Silver Fox's cabin home again for nearly a century.

As far as is known, the two men will not meet again until both serve in Team X, although it is known that Sabretooth eventually develops the habit of stalking and battling Logan on his birthday as a reminder of this earliest tragedy in their shared history. Logan will later note that he "threw away" his chance to go home years ago, possibly a reference to this incident. (Marvel Comics Presents #40

Unknown to Logan, Silver Fox is not dead and eventually recovers from the assault. Silver Fox's activities after this remain unknown for decades.

John Wraith (AKA Kestrel) remembers something different and a psychic named Aldo Ferro said this was one of his implanted memories (Wolverine #64)