Topeka ? With a little help from their friends, Steve and Janice Haberman are helping preserve the cowboy tradition of Kansas, instilling old-fashioned values of hard work, honesty and integrity along the way.

Haberman is the front man for the Bart Plasterson Gang, an eight-person troupe of Old West re-enactors who started performing cowboy shows last year and have been increasingly busy this spring and summer.

The Bart Plasterson Gang takes its talents to group meetings, church events and community programs. It has performed several times this spring at the Gage Park Miniature Railroad, conducting staged shootouts to the delight of young riders.

“The whole idea of this group is to make people aware of the great heritage Kansas has,” Haberman said recently over a cup of coffee. “The great Western, cowboy heritage.”

Haberman, of Topeka, came up with the character of Bart Plasterson. The name, he said, is a takeoff of Bat Masterson, the legendary Dodge City lawman.

Brad Hamilton, who plays the role of Doc, fires blanks as he acts out a train robbery at Gage Park in Topeka.

“I wanted a character who was a drunkard,” Haberman said, “so that’s where ‘Plasterson’ came from.”

A performance at the Red Rock Guest Ranch, near Soldier, resulted in Haberman and his fellow re-enactors meeting Brad Hamilton and BJ Forgy, a country music performer who once plied his trade in Nashville. Both Hamilton and Forgy regularly perform as members of the Bart Plasterson Gang, as does Ken Ellis.

Also participating is Haberman’s wife, Janice, in the role of “Stagecoach Kate,” who dresses in colorful 1870s regalia. When young children are “deputized” during a performance, it is “Stagecoach Kate” who does the honors.

“She’s done a lot of work with the scripts,” Haberman said. “She fine-tunes our act, based on the audience response. She’s kind of our conscience.”

Other group members include Don and Louis Garner and Mose Hamilton.

Don Garner, who plays the role of Cactus Jack, falls to the ground after being shot while attempting a mock train robbery at Gage Park in Topeka.

While much of the group’s show entails comedic elements, Haberman said its members use replicas of authentic Old West firearms, including .45 Colt revolvers – firing blanks instead of bullets.

The loud “bang” made by the guns has startled more than one audience, particularly when performances are done indoors. But once the smoke clears – and there is plenty of that, too – the audience is roaring and clamoring for more, Haberman said.

Skits are lip-synced to a CD the group’s members recorded, to save on their voices and allow the audience to hear clearly what is being said.

Haberman said the Bart Plasterson Gang isn’t like groups of historical re-enactors who pay attention to small details like the number of buttons on a shirt, in keeping with styles worn 150 years ago.

Rather, it seeks to retell the Old West story in an entertaining fashion, instilling traditional values in audience members both young and old.