Cure For The Common Cody

In fact, Cody enjoyed stone fences to excess in the saloon upstairs at the Buckhorn. But when this is pointed out, Huffman takes offense. "I did taper off to just about nothing," he says, in character.

History supports this -- by the time the real Cody passed on, at 83, he had indeed reduced his alcohol consumption -- but Huffman's impressionistic zeal, combined with the fact that he's been doing Cody for so long, tends to blur the edges. "I used to be able to ride my horse into the bar at the Plains Hotel and drink a beer," Huffman -- or is that Cody himself? -- says, "but they remodeled it so you can't ride a horse in there at all anymore."

You can ride a horse at Huffman's Buffalo Bill-inspired bunkhouse on his property in Evergreen, Colorado, where the fridge contains a Coors Light or two.

"I can talk for about twenty minutes on any part of ol' Cody's life," Huffman elaborates, slipping in and out of character. "That's what they had me do down at the Broadmoor [Hotel in Colorado Springs] or over at that ol' Summit of the Eight. I can tell all about how I got together my Wild West Show and how I had 230 Indians with me. And I talk about how Doc sent me over to Glenwood Springs [Colorado] when I got sick, but I came back to my sister's house on Lafayette Street and died there. And there's another thing, too. They say I should have been buried at Cody, but I was a showman first and foremost and if I'd a been buried at Cody, maybe a bunch of ol' sheepherders would have turned out for my funeral. As it was, my funeral in Denver was as good as a president's -- 26,000 people -- in 1917. That's pretty good."

During Huffman's first fifteen years as ol' Cody, he hung on to his job at Gates Rubber Company. After that, he retired. "Hell, it got to be full-time doing ol' Cody," he says. "One summer I was in Germany five times! And I've been to Ireland, England and they wanted me at EuroDisney in Paris. For eight months!"

By the time his Bill career peaked a few years ago, the turning-seventy Huffman no longer had to use artificial whitener on his hair and beard -- nature had taken care of it. Whether he might still be missing any bit of Bill, and whether he might find it at Mack's auction, Huffman is reluctant to say.

"I did hear he had quite a collection of original posters," he offers. "I know who he got them from, and I would have liked to have gotten them first."

There is a certain symmetry between Mack's auction and the quietly whispered rumor that Huffman himself may retire.

"I've said that myself," Huffman admits. "I might even do it."

But that would mean giving up Bill -- no easy feat after all this time in the spotlight.

As auction day approaches, Mack gets busier, but never too busy for coffee at Cox's Diner, a business that, like a few others in Garden City, was once owned by Mack.

"Hell, we have coffee three times a day in these little towns," he says, looking around at the company. Three babies in high chairs are stationed near the window. A waitress sits across the room with a friend, speculating on the faithlessness of someone called Nick. Ron McMillan, the former village idiot and current Native American craftsmen impersonator, comes in from an afternoon of weed-whacking.

"Usually, there's someone in here who wants to know what I'm going to do next," Mack says. "I like to say, 'Oh, I think I'm going to do what you do. Maybe I'll open a car wash kind of like yours, or I might do small engine repair.' I like to make them nervous that way, even if it is a fib. Bill told a lot of fibs, you know."

And Bill's still drinking a lot of coffee -- maybe three times a day in Cox's Diner?

"Could be," Mack admits. "As kids, we all wanted to be someone else. And we still do, don't we?"