At the end of a bloody trail, Johnny Redd finds an incredible secret. While struggling with a bullet in his chest, he crawls along the ground until he finds himself surrounded by a maze of quaint carnival tarps. Inside is a world of color, costumes, false hair, nails, eyelashes -- and a man who dresses like a woman. It’s a world of trickery, deception, and lies. Johnny makes it just inside the tent when his strength fails and he faints dead away. When he awakes, he’s reminded of the bizarre reality that surrounds him. It’s that he learns he has been taken care of by a man – er. woman -- by the name of Frenchy Starr. The name rolls from the tongue of this fallen angel, this princess of darkness, this twilight queen. She’s a mystery, a dangerously beautiful mystery, and Johnny slowly becomes ensnared in the trap which she sets. After one night of incredible love, a jealous fan shoots Frenchy. Thinking her dead, Johnny’s heart is broken and he leaves in search of something to fill the hole she left in his heart. Enter Kit Dalton.

Carnival Cowboy

When the sheriff came out of his office, he was on his way to the town stable when he noticed that one corner of a wanted poster was hanging down flapping in the wind. He walked over to the board, and looked at it. It looked like someone had pulled it down, and then put it back up in a big hurry. This started the sheriff to thinking. He was standing there rearranging the board when someone walked up.


“I put it up yesterday, but it looks like someone pulled it off, and didn’t do a very good job of putting it back up again. Kind of like they were in a hurry.”


The stranger looked at the face on the poster. “You know, I could swear I saw that man in the saloon just yesterday.”


The sheriff looked over at the man, and with a concerned look on his face, he said, “You sure?”


Chapter 13