‘Buckaroos’ Aiming To Keep Old West Alive Group That Re-Creates Wild West Will Shoot Up Rodeo

Watch out for a grizzled, long-haired cowboy with an antique six-shooter at the Springdale Rodeo July 15-16.

He could be trouble.

In fact, Springdale Marshal Jerry Taylor expects gun play when area resident Reggie Byrum and his friends come to town.

Also known as the Apache Kid, Byrum runs with an outlaw gang called the Buckaroos that shot up Tombstone, Ariz. Word has it they’re planning to do the same in Springdale.

Taylor plans to watch the show along with everyone else.

The Buckaroos specialize in recreating the period from 1860 to 1897 for Western movies. Byrum has recruited a few of his Buckaroo friends to stage a shootout for the rodeo.

The Buckaroos have appeared in three movies. The best-known so far is “Tombstone,” one of two 1994 versions of the famous 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral. The Buckaroos provide gritty background images of the red-sash-wearing outlaw gang known as the Cowboys.

If you look carefully over Ike Clanton’s shoulder when Tombstone Marshal Fred White is murdered, there’s Byrum. He’s also one of the desperadoes riding through the dust storm in the title scene, and his reflection adds menace to the scene in which the stagecoach is held up.

His name in the credits is the only clear evidence that Byrum is in the movie.

“I tried to stay as low-key as possible,” he said. “They say they use you more if you stay more low-key.”

Still, Byrum and other Buckaroos pride themselves on the authenticity of the equipment and clothing they bring to their movie roles.

He wears the same kind of canvas pants and high-rise leather boots that would have been worn at the time Wyatt Earp and his brothers ventilated three members of the Cowboy gang. Byrum packs an original 1873 long Colt .45-caliber revolver and uses an old-fashioned saddle.

“We try to portray the West as close as possible to the authentic, from our shoes to our gun holsters and what have you,” Byrum said.

Historians may fault the story line, but Byrum thinks the movie is remarkable for the authenticity of its props.

“Everything in ‘Tombstone’ was right from the period - except for those three shots that Val Kilmer (playing Doc Holliday) got out of that double-barreled shotgun,” By- rum said.

“In so many of the Westerns, you go back and look and they were using Winchester ‘92s or ‘94s instead of the ‘73 models they would have been using at the time,” he said.

Naturally, his collection includes one of the 1873 repeating rifles “they say won the West.”

He wishes the old guns could talk: “Who knows where they’ve been?”

Even the lightning in “Tombstone” is real. Actor Harry Carey Jr. came to associate it with Byrum and dubbed him “Lightning Boy.”

“It was scary,” said Becky Byrum, who was with her husband during the four-month filming in and around Tucson. “I’ll never forget that last day when a thunderstorm hit. We had like a flash flood.”

The 30 men in the Buckaroos come from all over the West and Midwest when a movie needs them.

In addition to “Tombstone,” they’ve been used in “Hard Bounty,” which is out now, and “The Outsider,” which is still unreleased. Sometime in the next few months, the Buckaroos are to be in a yetunnamed Western starring Sylvester Stallone’s brother, Frank.

So Springdale civic leaders wasted no time in recruiting Byrum for the rodeo board when he and his wife moved to the area last summer.

The Byrums live on an 80-acre spread near Ford. They bought the property with their friend Larry “Waco” Geller, who plans to move there soon from Hawaii.

Like the Byrums, Geller is a member of the Single Action Shooting Society that sponsors shooting events throughout the United States. Members don their Old West togs, shoot their vintage guns and socialize.

Byrum likes all the smoke his guns belch from the black powder he puts in his cartridges.

“I may not be a very good shot, but I look good and it’s what they shot back then,” he said.

Woe to the careless member who turns out in tennis shoes. “They’ll shun him or won’t let him shoot,” Byrum said.

The Byrums and Geller had hoped to use their property for Old West reenactments in which paying guests could ride through the woods on horseback, visit a wagon train or stay in an Indian village.

“It’d be ‘City Slickers’ all over again,” Byrum said.

A belated discovery that they’re not surrounded by Forest Service land dampened the plan, but the Byrums still hope to develop a shooting range for Single Action Shooting Society events.

They’re recruiting members for a local chapter and so far have about eight. The Byrums hope the group eventually will provide entertainment at rodeos and other events.

Nationally, Byrum said the Single Action Shooting Society has about 10,000 members from all walks of life, including retired basketball star Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

Byrum, 55, got involved a dozen or so years ago and Becky, 47, became his “Clementine” five years ago when the couple was married in Southern California.

Her mandatory shooting nickname is fanciful, but “Apache Kid” Byrum said his great-great grandfather rode with the Apache warrior Geronimo.

Byrum’s stepfather also had roots in the Old West. He was the greatgrandson of a soldier who rode with Gen. George Armstrong Custer but was discharged before the 7th Cavalry was wiped out at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The lucky ancestor went on to become an Indian agent in the Dakotas.

Byrum has lived all around the country and held a variety of jobs, from commercial fishing in Alaska to general labor now at the Northwest Alloys magnesium smelter in Addy, Wash.

“This is the first place I’ve ever been where they haven’t hassled me about having long hair,” he said.

Byrum rode a Harley-Davidson in a motorcycle club as a young man, but abandoned that lifestyle as too dangerous. Reliving the Old West is much safer, he said.

However, he was shot to death in his last two movies.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo