Childhood dreams often get lost in the grind of being an adult, but David " Eldorado Duke" Boggs was a cowboy till he died.

Boggs, who made a career in law enforcement, found his passion in cowboy-mounted shooting.

It's a sport — one that's growing in popularity across the United States — but it's also a way of life. Participants dress in period costumes from the 1800s, fire guns from horseback and camp out under the stars.

Boggs died on Saturday at age 72, after a nearly yearlong illness.

At Boggs' funeral in Knox County yesterday, many of those who attended donned cowboy gear and came on horseback.

The minister wore a cowboy hat, jeans and a red scarf. Speakers strode to the podium with spurs jangling. Boggs' pall-bearers loaded his coffin into a caisson drawn by two horses. Boggs' own horse, Annie, followed with an empty saddle and Boggs' boots in the stirrups.

"Hell of a man," said Mark Wright, president of the Northern Ohio Outlaws — a mounted-shooting group that Boggs helped found. "Hell of a cowboy."

Boggs grew up on a Pataskala farm in the 1940s and '50s, riding ponies in the fields with his best friend.

He served in the Army, and spent 47 years in law enforcement in central Ohio. Boggs was a police officer at Ohio State University during the 1970 riots during the Vietnam War. He also worked for a handful of other central Ohio law-enforcement agencies, including the Dublin and Columbus police departments, the Defense Supply Center Columbus, and the Knox County sheriff's office.

His daughter, Ammie Boggs of Centerburg, said he loved his work.

But it was the cowboy life that he loved most. He named his son Cheyenne, after the city in Wyoming. He wanted to name his daughter Shiloh, but his wife put her foot down.

He both loved and respected guns, teaching his children to shoot only after teaching them about safety and how to keep the guns clean. He shot skeet and clay pigeons, taking Cheyenne, who's now 30, along with him.

But Boggs didn't shoot deer.

"He thought they were beautiful creatures," said his former wife, Ann Cordle, with whom he remained close. Instead, he would put out hay for them during the winter and sit on his back porch to watch them graze.

Two years ago, he adopted a poodle-Pomeranian mix and named him Duke, after his hero John Wayne.

Boggs also played the guitar, something his police friends say they almost can't imagine. Earlier this summer, he sent his daughter to his house to pick up two guitars and a blue suitcase that contained music equipment. When Ammie Boggs opened the case, though, she found a folder of love songs that her father had written.

"These were sappy, corny, typical country tell-a-story love-type of love songs," Ammie Boggs said.

Last Thanksgiving, Boggs complained that his stomach hurt. He thought it was indigestion. It ended up being cancer, which quickly spread.

Last week, as he lay dying, Boggs asked Cordle to marry him again. She thought he was joking, but then their children told her that he'd already asked them for their approval.

At his graveside at Eastview Cemetery in Centerburg yesterday, the minister looked at the band of cowboys and cowgirls assembled on their horses, and called out: "Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition!"

A woman on horseback shouted, "Fire in the hole!"

The Northern Ohio Outlaws raised their guns and fired into the sky.