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

As Kit shrewdly took note of where they were going, Johnny upended his glass and grimaced as the strong liquid made a burning path down his throat, and into his stomach. He immediately felt a slight buzz, and knew that with it would come a kick, a kick that would stir up a feeling of false courage. The kind of kick that could make a man stupidly draw on a gunman with twice his speed. The kind of kick that would make a man shoot up a town, shoot down some innocent bystander, kick a cat, and maybe even do something really stupid, like find out that a friend really wasn’t a friend, but an enemy.


He quickly pushed the glass away and turned to go outside and around to the back of the saloon. There, he took his place beside the back door, and opened it slightly. Inside he saw the back table in the saloon where the sheriff was sitting with Reno.


Chapter 18