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Bruce Gibson was admittedly a little Trigger-happy as a kid. Roy Rogers was his idol. "Happy Trails" was his theme song.

When I die, he told his wife, skip the funeral urn and just keep my ashes in a Roy Rogers lunch box.

Seven months after Gibson's death, his wish has been fulfilled by an Ellensburg, Wash., bookstore owner he never met.

And Beverly Gibson says her husband is now resting in peace.

Gibson, a Federal Way, Wash., real-estate appraiser, was 49 when he died in May after several surgeries and painful chemotherapy. That day, there was an article in the Seattle Times, a reporter's reminiscence of growing up with Roy Rogers and the gang at the Double R Bar Ranch, at the movies and later on TV.

At the funeral, Gibson's friends talked about the article and how he always had to be Roy when the neighborhood children played cowboys. They told Beverly they'd be on the lookout in second-hand stores for a lunch box.

Then, several weeks ago, Beverly Gibson wrote to the Seattle Times to say how much the article meant to her and that she still was looking for a Roy Rogers lunch box.

"When we find one," she wrote, "Bruce will get his final wish and I will be able to give him one last gift after 25 years of marriage."

A Seattle Times artist, Randee Fox, saw the letter and called a friend who knew Richard Denner, owner of the Fourwinds Bookstore and Cafe in the eastern Washington city of Ellensburg. Denner had had a Roy Rogers/Dale Evans Chow Wagon lunch box on a shelf in the store for 20 years, ever since his mother-in-law found it in a junk store and gave it to Denner's boy. Sometimes the Denners kept pennies in it. A few years ago, Denner set it up in a display with some Old West books.

There's an autograph on it, although it's faded to the point where you have to know where to look to see it.

"I don't think it was signed by Roy," Denner says. "It was probably by his son Dusty." Though it was likely worth up to $300, "I never sold it because I always figured there had to be something more to retailing than money," Denner said.

As soon as he heard about Gibson's last wish, Denner put the lunch box in the mail to Gibson's widow.

"I'm an old hippie," Denner says, "so it seems sort of cosmic to me. Now Bruce can rest in peace."

Some friends and family think the whole thing's a little weird, Beverly Gibson admits. "It isn't, though, not at all," she says. "Bruce was sort of fun, and to me this was a fun thing. Now he's got what he wanted.

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