National Cowboy Hall Of Fame

There is enough gear to furnish a stockade and enough saddles to outfit a stampede--the National Cowboy Hall of Fame is corralling a museum's worth of memorabilia from the Old West. Closets packed with suits. Shelves lined with elaborate boots and military helmets bristling with spikes and plumes. Pistols and sabers, holsters and bullets. Drawers of beaded gauntlets, chaps and spurs. Saddles and tack.

"Splendid behavior." The words stand out on a gravestone in Weatherford, Texas, where Bose Ikard is buried. Born a slave, Ikard rode for years after his emancipation with cattle barons Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, whose exploits became the stuff of legend in Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove." Ikard was the real-life inspiration for McMurtry's fictional Josh Deets. Capt. Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae were based on Goodnight and Loving.

"Splendid behavior." The words stand out on a gravestone in Weatherford, Texas, where Bose Ikard is buried. Born a slave, Ikard rode for years after his emancipation with cattle barons Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, whose exploits became the stuff of legend in Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove." Ikard was the real-life inspiration for McMurtry's fictional Josh Deets. Capt. Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae were based on Goodnight and Loving.

There is enough gear to furnish a stockade and enough saddles to outfit a stampede--the National Cowboy Hall of Fame is corralling a museum's worth of memorabilia from the Old West. Closets packed with suits. Shelves lined with elaborate boots and military helmets bristling with spikes and plumes. Pistols and sabers, holsters and bullets. Drawers of beaded gauntlets, chaps and spurs. Saddles and tack.

Roy Rogers, the "King of the Cowboys" who sang, smiled and occasionally shot his way into the hearts of multitudes of Little Buckaroos, died Monday. He was 86. Rogers died of congestive heart failure in his Apple Valley home near Victorville, with his wife and co-star Dale Evans and other family members at his side. He had undergone heart surgery in 1977 and 1990 and had been somewhat frail in recent years.

For Cowboy Junkies: Yes, it's another one for "Dances With Wolves." The film won the best movie award in the National Cowboy Hall of Fame's 30th Annual Western Heritage Award competition, which honors outstanding achievements in Western film, television, literature and music. Kevin Costner will be honored at the 1991 Western Heritage Awards ceremony March 16 in Oklahoma City.

Cowboy Roundup: Former Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) and actors Chuck Connors and James Drury are among five people to be inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City next month. The late actor Tim Holt and J. Ernest Browning, one of the hall's founders, also will be inducted March 16.

Clayton Moore says playing the Lone Ranger on the long-running television series fulfilled a childhood dream. "When I was a kid, I wanted to be a policeman or a cowboy and I got the white hat," Moore said Saturday night as he was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame's Hall of Great Western Performers. "I will always wear it because I believe in the good guys." Moore also paid tribute to the late Jay Silverheels, who played Tonto on "Lone Ranger." "I had help along the way.

Hoyle Nix, a fiddler for 40 years who led The West Texas Cowboys and also appeared with some of the biggest names in country and Western music, has died at 67. Nix, who was influenced by the music of Bob Wills, died Wednesday after what was described as a brief illness. He and The West Texas Cowboys were familiar faces at annual Bob Wills Day celebrations in Texas.

Veteran actor Albert Salmi, who found steady Hollywood work in television Westerns like "Gunsmoke," was found shot to death along with his wife, and police said today that it appeared to be a murder-suicide. Salmi, 62, apparently shot his 55-year-old estranged wife, Roberta G. Salmi, then killed himself, police spokesman Lt. Robert Van Leuven. A neighbor who had gone to check on Roberta Salmi on Monday night saw her body on the kitchen floor through a window and called police.

John Sinclair, 91, the prize-winning Western writer who lived the rural New Mexico life that he chronicled in his books. Sinclair's best-known work, the 1943 novel "In Time of Harvest," was reissued in September by Clear Light Press of Santa Fe. Other Sinclair novels included "Death in the Claimshack," and "Cousin Drewey and the Holy Twister." His nonfiction works include "New Mexico: The Shining Land" and "Cowboy Riding Country."

John Dunkel, 86, a writer for such television Western series as "Gunsmoke" and "Rawhide." Born in Springfield, Ohio, and educated at Wittenberg University, Dunkel came to Southern California in the 1930s and worked at the Pasadena Playhouse. He was a writer for CBS radio before moving into television. Personally enamored of the Western genre, Dunkel hiked and camped throughout the Sierra and collected rare books about the West.