Cure For The Common Cody

Her boyfriend, Tom, does a generic riverboat gambler type. On any given weekend, an assortment of Civil War veterans, desperadoes, Victorian ladies and saloon girls can be found in the hills around Golden. It pays -- in terms of satisfaction, as opposed to remuneration -- to be flexible. Nevertheless, in other locations where Bills crop up, the occasional very specific John Wayne, Tom Mix or Roy Rogers has been known to appear.

No one would be surprised to see any of these amateur actors at Mack's auction. But this time it's the Codys who count.

"If you portray Cody, you can portray the entire West," says Kirk Shapland of Dighton, Kansas. Shapland calls himself "The Cody of the Plains" and is thought to be a leading practitioner of the Young Bill school of reenacting.

Fittingly, he started early. At fifteen, he and a friend volunteered for living history training at Fort Hays, Kansas. "My friend portrayed a soldier, and I was supposed to, but I wanted to do a scout impression," he recalls. "Actually, I was interested in Wild Bill Hickock, who'd been the unofficial marshal of Hays, but I was too young and the curator didn't want anyone doing a specific character."

Eventually, Shapland grew into a different role.

"I got older, and my hair got longer and my facial hair came in," he says. "The Fort has lots of pictures of Cody and I guess I favored him, because people just began to assume that's who I was supposed to be. I was a bit relieved not to be taken for Hickock. As Cody, I didn't have to be quite the killer."

Shapland's portrayal evolved until it became the plainsman he is today -- the Cody of 1867-1869, a wild young man in his early twenties who had yet to be seduced by the muse he called The Show Business. At reenactments, 29-year-old Shapland sets up an entire buffalo camp, complete with dressed carcasses, a teepee and the appropriate firearms.

"I've been asked if I'm the reincarnation of Cody, but I don't think so," he says. "I talk about the man in the third person. I represent what he would have looked like and what he had, and I'm not sure we had all that much in common."

Still, Cody's life has bled into Shapland's -- he never leaves the house without putting on a trademark white Cody hat, even if he's wrangling cattle or mowing lawns, two jobs he does to make ends meet. Money is tight, especially when his budget has to cover buckskin coats, thigh-high boots and whalebone corset stays. (Shapland's wife, Ella, is said to do a decent "composite Victorian woman.")

Nevertheless, Shapland has his eye on a buffalo robe set to be auctioned off. "It would add to my camp," he says, "and anyway, I'd like to go and see Mack. I can't believe he quit."

"Oh, we're all looking for a little something, and Mack probably has it," says Melfi, the Wheat Ridge, Colorado, financial planner who specializes in middle-aged Bill. "The only way to put together a Cody ensemble is with little bits and pieces. You go to stores and auctions, and of course, the Internet is wonderful. You can go on eBay, and there is so much interest in reenactment."

Melfi says he has always "lived the life of cowboys and Indians, if only mentally," and was first spotted as a dead ringer for Cody at the Buckhorn Exchange restaurant in 1977.

"Buffalo Bill and the Indians, the Robert Altman movie, had just come out, and someone told me I looked more like Buffalo Bill than Paul Newman did," he remembers. "I strutted around like a peacock and felt wonderful about it."

Melfi became an active member of the American Federation of Old West Reenactors (which, naturally, has a Web site: AFOWR.com), where he mastered the fifteen-minute skit as well as his Cody. "But I'm versatile," he adds. "I do cavalry officers. I was General Merritt for the BBC a while back, and I often do Captain Miles Keogh, one of Custer's men. He was an Irish soldier of fortune, so I can use lots of 'hell' and 'damn' and 'arse.' In the middle of a scene I am Miles Keogh. My whole mind is there."

As fate would have it, his wife-to-be is Annie Oakley, as well as Calamity Jane and Cynthia Ann Parker, an Indian captive. Melfi's son, however, is immune. "Last time I mentioned doing Captain Keogh, he suggested I do Captain Kangaroo next," Melfi says. At the time he had no zippy reply, but now he does: "Captain Kangaroo? What unit is he with?"

Such a quip would be useless to Al Huffman, who has been Denver's reigning Bill -- or "ol' Cody," as he puts it -- for the past thirty years. Since there was no Captain Kangaroo at the time of ol' Cody's demise, he makes a poor conversation topic. Because when you're talking with Huffman, you're talking with Colonel Cody.

"I probably would have ate antelope, if they had it," he says over a slice of buffalo prime rib at the Buckhorn Exchange. "I liked that. I also enjoyed a stone fence, which is rye whiskey, apple cider and a twist of lime."