Wild Mustangs & the Lone Ranger

In the middle distance I saw it – a huge plume of dust, reaching for the sky. When the dust settled a bit the source of the disturbance could be seen. More than a dozen wild mustangs were racing across the open range to destinations unknown. It was a remarkable sight and a perfect way to end a research trip about the Old West. Coincidentally I was listening to classic radio programs on SirusXM and an episode of the Lone Ranger was playing. The pair were on a quest to capture a bad guy and hold him accountable for his misdeeds. It’s a theme that never fails to capture my attention and leaves me aching for someone like the Lone Ranger to ride right through Norborne, Missouri and bring the bad guys to heel. So what happened to the Lone Ranger? Clayton Moore played the masked cowboy riding high on his horse Silver in the popular radio and TV show during the fifties. With the help of the wise, quiet Indian Tonto, played by Jay Silverheels, the duo went about righting injustices in over two hundred episodes. Moore had the odd fate for an actor of wearing a mask onscreen so that even during the fame of the show, he was hardly recognized. Perhaps for this, there is no other actor who clung to his role so diligently, regularly donning the mask and costume to go out in the public, some say even while in his car at a drive-through for fast-food. He was seen wearing his Lone Ranger costume shortly before his death of a heart attack in 1999 at the age of eighty-five. Silverheels took much less affinity to his role as Tonto and passed away quietly, though coughing laconically, at age sixty in 1980, of pneumonia. Hi-Ho, Silver, no more.