According to family lore, my grandfather traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.

He was an excellent hunter, the legend goes: While riding a galloping horse, he could shoot a rabbit between the eyes.

My grandfather, the hunter, apparently supplied food for the company, which reportedly included 1,200 performers and other employees.

I never knew him, but I’ve heard stories that I admit I can’t confirm.

Apparently, this man, who was born on a westward-bound wagon train, had an adventuresome streak. He supposedly rode for Pony Express; he tried and failed at operating several businesses; he reared a family in a sod house in Missouri, where a child of his died in the great 1918 flu pandemic; and, according to a cousin’s research, he may have hung out with Billy the Kid, although that story is probably more unlikely than the others.

But the legend that my grandfather hunted game for Buffalo Bill persists. And now that the show Annie Get Your Gun is being performed at the Coaster Theatre in Cannon Beach through Dec. 30 (and Jan. 14 and 15 at the Liberty Theater in Astoria), I can’t help but think about him.

That’s because I have a small role as an ensemble member in the cast of Annie Get Your Gun. As I play a town person with a crush on sharpshooter Frank Butler or as one of the “white-gloved” society ladies starry-eyed over the guests -Butler, Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill – attending a cocktail party, it’s fun to wonder what my grandfather would have been doing.

Would he have been in the crowd while Buffalo Bill’s stage manager enticed townsfolk to spend money for watching re-enactments of stagecoach holdups and daring rescues? Or would he be standing in the corner of the big tent while Annie Oakley performed her dangerous shooting trick on the back of a horse?

How would he have gotten along with Sitting Bull, who also traveled with the show? Was he jealous of the other sharpshooters? Did he secretly feel he should have been sharing the fame instead of snaring the game?

At one point in Annie Get Your Gun, Annie complains about not having much to eat. She shoots a seagull from where she is standing in the back of a cattle boat and asks the cook to fix a seagull sandwich. Now, just how much pressure would my grandfather have felt, knowing that the show’s star was going hungry?

I’ve never had a desire to take up hunting. I’ve never shot a gun, never wanted to. But in those days, hunting was a way of life. Let’s face it: Restaurants, grocery stores and fast-food stops weren’t on every corner. My grandfather played a necessary role, unlike his granddaughter, whose role is to sing and dance in some scenes and applaud during shooting matches in other scenes.

It might have been interesting traveling across the United States, seeing the country in the days before urban sprawl. In Annie Get Your Gun, the troupe is touring by train. Annie has her own train car that she shares with her brother and sisters. They sing Moonshine Lullaby before going to sleep.

I doubt my grandfather ever sang lullabies while hunting for bison or other meat. He may have been too “manly” to do that, or, he simply may not have known a lullaby.

I don’t think he ever made it to Great Britain or Europe, where the Wild West show toured from 1887 to 1890. However, according to some records, accompanying the cast and crew were nearly 200 horses and numerous buffalo, elk, steers, donkeys and deer.

When I travel from here to Portland, I sometimes take my cat. The elk and deer stay at home in the woods.

Nearly 100 years after the Wild West show folded, about the only thing that remains is the legend of Buffalo Bill. Nothing is left from my grandfather, except that tantalizing bit of history … or historical fiction.

If he did hunt for the show, it’s still fun to think that I could be sharing a link with a grandfather I never knew. He may not have sung for his supper, but I’ll still hunt for things we could have in common.

Nancy McCarthy is the South County reporter for The Daily Astorian. Her column appears on alternate weeks.