OUTLAW Turned Lawman: Frank Canton & the Johnson County War

The frontier legend known as Frank Canton, the relentless lawman who hunted rustlers across Wyoming and Oklahoma, was unmasked in death as Joe Horner, an escaped convict and accused murderer who reinvented himself as one of the Old West’s most feared enforcers of justice.

The startling revelation, buried for decades in prison records and personal papers, exposes one of the most extraordinary identity transformations in American frontier history—a man who spent his youth robbing banks and shooting at United States soldiers before spending his final decades wearing a badge and hunting the very outlaws he once resembled.

Born Josiah Horner in Henry County, Indiana, on September 15, 1849, the man who would become Frank Canton grew up in a family perpetually on the move, drifting from Indiana to Missouri to Kansas before finally settling in Texas. His father and older brother both enlisted with Confederate forces during the Civil War, yet young Joe inexplicably attempted to join the Union Army at just fourteen years of age—a decision that foreshadowed his lifelong pattern of aligning himself with whoever held power.

By fifteen, Horner was working as a teamster out of Fort Leavenworth, and according to one account, he killed his first man during an argument with his boss, smashing the victim’s skull with a neck yoke. He was tried before a military tribunal and acquitted, but the episode marked the beginning of a violent career that would span more than half a century.

The Horner family eventually settled in Denton County, Texas, about thirty miles north of Fort Worth, where Joe took up cowboying with Christopher Carter’s outfit in nearby Jack County. He participated in his first cattle drive in 1868, helping push fifteen hundred Longhorns to Kansas railheads alongside his friend Samuel Burk Burnett, for whom the town of Burkburnett would later be named.

The drive proved disastrous. The young cowboys refused to pay a toll of fifty beeves demanded by Osage Indians in Indian Territory, and the natives retaliated by stampeding the herd and making off with nearly all the outfit’s horses. Horner later described the subsequent hundred-mile walk to Abilene as the most difficult task he had ever experienced.

By the early 1870s, Horner had partnered with William Cottam to form the Horner-Cottam Gang, a loose collection of young hellraisers who spent more time drinking and gambling in the wild town of Jacksboro than tending cattle. The gang soon graduated from rustling Indian ponies to more ambitious criminal enterprises, and when a safe was stolen from the Jacksboro post office in 1874, they became the prime suspects.

A former pig farmer turned Army scout named Henry Strong had lost over a thousand dollars in the heist, and he was not about to let it go. When gang member Horus Jeffries was spotted passing counterfeit bills from the stolen safe, Strong and an inexperienced Deputy US Marshal named Wy Lovejoy set out to arrest him.

The confrontation that followed became the stuff of frontier legend. When Jeffries went for his gun, Lovejoy managed to wrestle the weapon away—only to inexplicably throw the loaded pistol at the fleeing outlaw. Jeffries picked up the gun and opened fire, but Strong kept his cool and killed the man with a well-placed shot.

Several attempts were made on Strong’s life in the months that followed, usually by shots fired from the cover of darkness, but all missed their mark. Strong was convinced that Horner himself was behind the assassination attempts, though he could never prove it.

In October 1874, Horner became embroiled in a gun battle with United States Army soldiers that would cement his reputation as a dangerous outlaw. According to his own account, he was drinking in a Jacksboro saloon when several black troopers from the 10th Cavalry demanded that he buy them drinks. Horner refused, words were exchanged, and a private named George Smith ended up bleeding on the floor.

When a detachment of six soldiers arrived to apprehend him, Horner refused to surrender, touching off a full-scale gunfight in the streets of Jacksboro. His friend Joe Watson joined the fray as the two men opened fire on the approaching cavalrymen, with Horner emptying his six-shooter before grabbing his Winchester and coolly firing at the soldiers until his horse was shot from under him.

Horner’s friend Frank Lake eventually convinced him to flee, and the two men escaped with Horner riding behind Lake on his horse. The soldiers pursued, wounding Lake in the thigh, and Horner left his injured companion behind as he made his getaway on Lake’s horse.

The Army never pursued charges against Horner, and local public sentiment was squarely on his side. The district attorney, however, had had enough. In addition to the assault charge and cattle rustling charges, Horner now faced assault with intent to murder.

He was arrested on November 27, 1874, and released on bond, with a trial scheduled for February 1875.

But Horner’s outlaw activities continued unabated. In January 1875, just a month before his trial, he was accused twice more of stealing cattle. When he finally appeared before the court, he faced a total of six indictments.

The trial was postponed as the court tried to locate witnesses, and Horner’s bond was increased significantly.

In September 1875, one of his benefactors withdrew his bond commitment, and the Jack County Sheriff was ordered to arrest Horner. He was placed in the jail at Graham, Texas, about twenty-five miles to the west, but he would only stay locked up for four nights. On September 1, four men busted him out, cutting the telegraph lines as they rode out of town.

Now a wanted man, Horner fully committed to the outlaw life. The San Antonio Daily reported that he was in charge of a band of desperados operating between Sherman and Griffin, and Texas Ranger D. W.

Roberts stated that Horner and his brother George had gone on a robbing and murdering expedition.

In January 1876, the Horner Gang attempted their first big score: the bank in Comanche, about a hundred miles south of Jacksboro. Henry Strong, still on the gang’s trail, tracked them to Comanche and was actually hiding in an alley as they robbed the bank. He got a positive identification on all of them and alerted the posse that immediately went in pursuit.

The posse tracked the outlaws nearly two hundred miles before their trail went cold, but Strong continued on alone to San Antonio. When Joe Horner rode into town on February 2, he was quickly arrested, as was his brother George. For a little over a year, the Horner brothers would rot in San Antonio’s notorious “Bat Cave” jail, so named for the thousands of bats that made their home between the roof and the canvas ceiling.

Joe Horner was finally tried for the bank robbery on March 15, 1877, and after a jury deliberation of just twenty-five minutes, he was sentenced to ten years of hard labor at the State Penitentiary in Huntsville. But just two weeks after the trial, Horner escaped jail again, Shawshank Redemption style, sawing through the plank lining of his cell and tunneling into the stone wall.

He and three other inmates squeezed through the opening, and the tallest among them, a black prisoner named Perry Upson, helped boost them all over the wall. They had rigged a blanket and pants into a rope, promising to haul Upson up after them. But once on top of the wall, they forgot all about their companion, leaving him behind as they made their getaway.

Horner’s newfound freedom would be short-lived. He held up a stagecoach east of Eagle Pass just sixteen days later and was recaptured that evening by a posse following a brief gunfight. He received an additional ten years for this escapade, and after another failed escape attempt, he was finally delivered to Huntsville on May 5, 1877, becoming inmate number 5920.

In those days, nearly eighty percent of the prisoners at Huntsville worked outside the walls, doing everything from picking cotton to railroad construction. Joe Horner got himself attached to one of these details, and on August 4, 1879, the outlaw simply disappeared, never to be seen again—at least not as Joe Horner.

The escaped convict traveled north to Wyoming and reinvented himself as Frank Canton, the epitome of law and order and a relentless pursuer of rustlers. He first served as an inspector and detective for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, then as Sheriff of Johnson County, before becoming a key player in the infamous Johnson County War.

According to author Robert K. DeArment in his book “Alias Frank Canton,” the transformation was deliberate. Canton greatly respected power and those who wielded it, and he had tried to exert his own power as an outlaw but failed because even on the unstable frontiers of Texas, the law and its enforcers were powerful enough to strike him down.

At some point during his incarceration, he decided to take a different path. He would ally himself with the powerful instead of defying them, and by making himself useful to those who wielded power, he would be protected by them and perhaps acquire some of that power for himself.

This pattern may have begun even earlier, when the fourteen-year-old Horner attempted to join the Union Army while his father and brother fought for the Confederacy. Everybody knew the Union was going to win, and the idea is that Canton even as a kid didn’t want to sign on with the losing team or even be associated with them.

In Wyoming, the cattle barons were certainly the winners in life’s big game, and they most definitely had all the power. Canton actively sought out and befriended his so-called betters, cultivating friendships with many of the area lawmen not just in Wyoming but Montana as well, before he ever pinned on a badge.

The Wyoming Stock Growers Association offered Canton a job as a stock inspector on August 22, 1881, and he accepted. His territory covered the entire northeast corner of Wyoming, from the Bighorn River west to the Tongue and from Sheridan all the way up to the Montana line. Since his responsibilities required making arrests, he was also given a commission as deputy sheriff of Johnson County.

Canton quickly became sheriff in everything but name, taking on the bulk of the responsibilities from the overwhelmed first elected Sheriff Nate James. The association gave him a raise from ninety to one hundred fifty dollars a month, and he filed on his own homestead of 480 acres several miles southwest of Buffalo, the county seat.

When his new friends urged him to run for sheriff, he did so, getting himself officially elected as Johnson County Sheriff in November 1882. He would have to resign his position as association inspector, but that was fine—he was already firmly in their pockets.

Canton was so successful at apprehending rustlers that he had to strengthen the county jail. He constructed a stockade around the building, purchased handcuffs and shackles, and even had a couple of steel cages installed. No prisoner ever escaped from his custody—a remarkable achievement for a man who himself had broken out of jail multiple times.

In the four years Canton served as Sheriff of Johnson County, he sent sixteen men to prison, fourteen of whom were convicted of stealing horses. He only hanged one man, a murderer named Bill Booth, whose real name was John Owens. Booth had killed an old German fur trapper he was staying with, and unlike some hangings in the Old West, this one went off without a hitch.

Famed author Owen Wister, who wrote “The Virginian,” met Canton and said of the sheriff that he did less shooting than any other officer in his position but was feared by all hands. Canton had nerves of steel and was apparently a very intimidating figure. When Canton got his still gray eyes on a man, that settled it, said one Johnson County resident.

Some of the more notable bandits Canton apprehended during his time as sheriff included Jim Cummins, a member of the James Gang going all the way back to the Bloody Bill Anderson days. Cummins was hiding out in Buffalo, Wyoming, working as a humble quiet shoemaker under an assumed name, until Canton arrested him.

Canton also arrested the infamous Teton Jackson, whose real name was Harvey Gleason. Jackson led a loosely organized band of criminals out of Jackson’s Hole and was by all accounts a pretty mean character. Once in prison, Teton Jackson wrote Canton a letter saying that he held no ill will against the lawman and if he could spare twenty dollars, he would appreciate it so he could purchase some tobacco.

Feeling generous, Canton sent the man the money.

This wouldn’t be Canton’s only act of kindness while sheriff. When he arrested two young Arapaho boys for killing cattle that weren’t theirs, Canton worked it out so that they received light sentences. As the prisoners sat in the Johnson County Jail, the wife of one of the young men would frequently visit, and she was put up in the Canton home as a guest, becoming good friends with Frank’s wife Annie.

Canton had married seventeen-year-old Anna May Wilkerson, the daughter of a local rancher, shortly after getting reelected as sheriff in November 1884. In December 1885, Frank and Annie welcomed their first child, a daughter they named Ruby. Financially, the family wasn’t doing too bad either.

Per 1885 tax records, in addition to his ranch, Frank owned three town lots in Buffalo, four horses, a carriage, two hundred fifty dollars worth of furniture, and musical instruments valued at twenty-five dollars.

But despite Canton’s effectiveness as sheriff, public opinion was quickly turning against the powerful ranchers who ruled Johnson County. Canton was having a harder and harder time getting convictions. He could arrest horse thieves all day long, but once they got into a Johnson County courtroom, the jury would let them go.

The cattle barons had blacklisted anybody they didn’t like and labeled them publicly as rustlers, and this didn’t sit too well with the general public. Since Canton was a known Wyoming Stock Growers Association man, it became apparent there was no way he could run and win a third term as sheriff. The people just weren’t behind him.

When his second term ended toward the end of 1886, Canton moved his little family from the cottage in town out to his ranch, where he finally had a nice home built. Surprising absolutely nobody, he went to work once again for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, this time as a detective.

His territory was massive, covering the whole of Johnson and Crook counties as well as the upper parts of Albany, Carbon, Uinta, and Fremont counties. He was given a US deputy’s commission as part of the job and the freedom to do his work in whatever manner he deemed appropriate to fit the circumstances.

When another detective reported several armed men in a certain location who bragged that they would not be taken alive, association secretary Thomas Sturgis wrote back that if necessary, the detective might carry out his plan of killing them all and then arresting them. Sturgis added that he did not think they would be a loss to the community.

Then the Great Blizzard of 1887 hit, wreaking absolute havoc on the entire cattle industry. Sixteen inches of snow covered the Northern Great Plains, with some areas dropping to fifty below zero. This accounted for millions of dead animals, or ninety percent of open range cattle.

There were so many dead cows that that year’s roundup was ironically referred to as “the die-up.”

As the snow melted and the ranchers began taking stock of their losses, many an outfit went bankrupt. Others simply cut their losses and moved back east or back to Europe, swearing off the cattle business entirely. Since the Wyoming Stock Growers Association was wholly funded by prominent cattle ranchers who were now going broke, they started cutting expenses.

Canton was asked to take a reduction in salary, and by December 1887, the entire detective bureau was dissolved.

Money aside, this was probably also due to the association’s detectives having the same issue Canton had when he was sheriff. Despite his initial success, it was getting nearly impossible to obtain convictions in the courts of law, even outside of Johnson County. The rising tide of public sentiment against the cattle barons was further exacerbated by something called the Maverick Bill being passed, named by some as one of the worst pieces of legislation ever inflicted on the West.

The Maverick Bill made it illegal to brand unbranded cattle, and all unbranded cattle were now property of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. If you wanted to purchase them, you could do so at auction, but the association had the power to approve or deny your brand, and they loved denying new brands that small ranchers tried to register.

By 1889, the association as an organization had failed to protect the interests of its members. The ranchers were putting up reward money for convictions, but these convictions were being laughed away in the local courts. The only thing left to do, it seemed, was to start killing.

The first victims were Jim Averell and his probably-wife Ella “Cattle Kate” Watson, who were taken from their home, trussed up, and summarily hanged, their bodies left for the vultures. Word quickly spread that this was the doing of some of the prominent cattlemen from Carbon County, but strangely enough, witnesses began dying and mysteriously vanishing.

Ella Watson was described in one encyclopedia as recently as 1977 as a notorious prostitute who prospered by establishing a bawdy house in Sweetwater, Wyoming, where cattle was the medium of exchange. But there’s a good chance that absolutely none of that was true.

The Canadian-born Watson had married at eighteen to a physically abusive drunk and obtained a divorce five years later. She found employment as both a cook and maid, working in Colorado first and then Wyoming, where she met Jim Averell. Averell had served ten years in the Army, attaining the rank of sergeant, before mustering out and starting his own homestead.

Both his wife and their premature baby had passed away, and heartbroken, Averell sold his homestead and filed on another fifteen miles away. Over the next few years, he made massive improvements on the land, building irrigation ditches, a fence, a vegetable garden, and a log cabin. He was appointed as Justice of the Peace, a notary public, and even a postmaster.

The couple had four land claims between them, and Ella had her own brand for her own little cattle herd. They even adopted an eleven-year-old boy. According to a teamster who made regular stops at Jim’s ranch, he was never accused of cattle stealing.

Another speaking of Ella said she was a very pretty woman and never seen a thing wrong with her.

More than one traveler spoke of being fed and given coffee by Ella or a dry place to sleep during a storm, and she refused to take money. Nobody went hungry around her, said John Fales, another local. She was not only a fine appearing woman but a good woman.

Neither one of them, meaning her and Jim, ever stole a cow, and those who say that Ella Watson slept with cowpunchers are slandering a good woman’s name.

The death of Cattle Kate and Jim Averell probably had something to do with the 640 acres they owned between them, property that although legally acquired was in the middle of a big pasture that one of the big ranchers, Albert Bothwell, considered his. This acreage also controlled one mile of water along Horse Creek.

Bothwell had been there before Ella and Jim. He grazed his cattle on all that open land for years, and he didn’t care for these newcomers sashaying in and trying to claim their piece of the pie, no matter the legalities. He made more than one attempt to buy the land outright from Ella and Jim, but they refused.

When they tried to register brands, their brands were denied. Ella actually had to buy an already registered brand from somebody else. Cowboys were sent in to harass the couple, and finally in late July 1889, a range detective claimed that the pair had stolen cattle on the property.

This was all that was needed for things to come to a head.

Bothwell was arrested along with five other men, but nothing became of it. In the end, he acquired the land of both Watson and Averell and ran cattle on it with zero repercussions. Bothwell would live and prosper for another thirty-eight years, buying up land to the very bitter end.

He died in March 1928 at the age of seventy-four.

This lynching would signal the beginning of the Johnson County War, and in no time flat, the bodies began stacking up. First to go was George B. Henderson, one of Canton’s buddies and a fellow detective for the association.

Officially, he was shot and killed on October 9, 1890, by some cowboys over a wage dispute. Unofficially, his death was considered to be an act of retaliation.

Eight months later, the reclusive Thomas Wagoner would be lynched in a similar fashion as Cattle Kate and Jim Averell. Masked men rode up to his ranch, tied him up, and took him away. A couple of weeks later, his body was found still hanging.

According to one paper, the rope had cut through the flesh after it became rotten, and maggots held high carnival over his lifeless body.

While nobody would ever be formally charged with Wagoner’s killing, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association was suspected. Enter Nate Champion, born Nathan Champion in Texas in September 1857. Champion grew up in the Round Rock area north of Austin, and much like Frank Canton, he took to punching cattle as a young man, even trailing herds all the way to the railheads in Kansas before venturing further.

At some point, Champion ended up in Wyoming, securing a job as the foreman for the EK Ranch. He was considered a crack shot with both pistol and rifle, and by the time of the Johnson County War, he would have been in his early to mid-thirties, the prime of his life, and just an all-around tough guy.

Champion eventually filed on his own ranch in Johnson County and pissed off the association by supporting their new rivals, the Northern Wyoming Farmers and Stock Growers Association. Even before the opposition was created, someone made a move against Champion. According to his account, he and another cowboy, Ross Gilbertson, were catching some shuteye in a remote cabin when early in the morning of November 1, 1891, the door flung open and a group of men came in and opened fire.

The first round just barely missed Champion’s head, coming so close that the powder burned his face. He immediately raised his own pistol and began returning fire, causing the would-be assassins to retreat. He and Gilbertson then tracked these wannabe killers and found where they laid in wait, discovering four overcoats, a pipe, three silk handkerchiefs, and a blood-covered tarp indicating that they hit at least one of them.

Those who believe the story suspect that Frank Canton was one of the attackers. Champion himself, however, could only verifiably identify one of them: association detective Joe Elliott, who was also likely one of the same ones who lynched Thomas Wagoner a few months earlier.

Less than a month following the alleged attack on the cabin, a blacklisted young cowboy named Orley “Ranger” Jones left Buffalo, Wyoming, with a wagon full of lumber he was going to use to construct a cabin for him and his new bride. He would never be seen alive again.

A couple of days later, yet another blacklisted cowpoke, John A. Tisdell, also left Buffalo in a wagon on the same road taken by Ranger. He had come to town to stock up on supplies for the winter as well as Christmas presents for his kids.

He even picked up a hound dog and her pup.

Tisdell was a former trail boss who led at least three drives out of Texas. He was also a one-time foreman of Teddy Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch. Roosevelt even gifted John a high chair when his first son was born.

As Tisdell left the town of Buffalo, unbeknownst to him, he was riding straight to his death.

As he passed through what’s now known as Haywood’s Gulch, two shots rang out. The first struck a holster, tearing his shoulder and ricocheting off and severing the jugular of one of his horses. The second would hit him in the side, killing him as he reached for his scattergun.

Whoever did the deed then led the remainder of Tisdell’s team away from the road, killed all the horses, and then made off.

But not without being seen. Canton’s own neighbor and kind-of-sort-of friend, Charlie Basch, saw a man that he thought was Frank Canton with a revolver in his hand, leading the wagon team off of the road. Assuming Canton was doing some sort of work for the US Marshal service and not wanting to interrupt him, Basch simply kept on going.

Moments later, he heard gunshots and saw somebody riding away on what appeared to be Canton’s horse.

Basch would not immediately tell the citizens of Buffalo what he witnessed, but he did tell fellow traveler Elmer Freeman when the two men met a few miles down the road. It was Freeman who ran into town to spread the news. Deputies were dispatched from Buffalo, and sure enough, Tisdell was found dead along with the horses.

The assassin even killed the hound dog; only the little puppy survived.

As far as Orley Ranger Jones is concerned, his body would be discovered riddled with bullets about a month later, just three miles from where Tisdell was murdered. A loaded gun in the wagon next to him and his holstered revolver indicated that Ranger’s death had come as a sudden surprise.

The prime suspect, backed up by at least one eyewitness, was Frank Canton. Word is that Tisdell, also from Texas, knew Frank from the old days and recognized him immediately the first time the two met in Buffalo. What’s more, Tisdell was friends with the two people that Canton had supposedly murdered back in Texas.

Both of these men were enemies of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, and Frank Canton was in the association’s employ. He may have just simply been ordered to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 them. What’s more, Basch the eyewitness would later claim that Canton had threatened him to keep his mouth shut about the whole ordeal.

A bunch of blacklisted cowboys, friends of the two dead men, descended upon Buffalo looking to set things straight. At their helm was a cowboy and suspected rustler by the name of Jack Flagg. He was actually known as the King of the Rustlers, but don’t forget that in Johnson County, Wyoming, in the 1890s, the term rustler was synonymous with just being a small homesteader or a rancher.

With Jack Flagg and the other so-called rustlers in Buffalo at the same time as Canton and his buddy Hess, people were expecting fireworks. Sure enough, armed angry men were openly talking about hanging the two. Frank, not wanting to be intimidated, went and met with Jack Flagg along with five or six of the angry cowboys and attempted to explain his innocence.

Once he figured that none of them were buying his story, he simply asked that they go ahead and make formal charges against him so that he could clear his name in court. They did so, and Johnson County Sheriff Red Angus promptly arrested Frank and stuck him in that little cottage that he used to live in back when he was the law.

There was an impromptu hearing on December 8, where the courts heard from Basch, who officially explained what he saw, and Frank had his say as well, testifying on his own behalf and claiming that neither he nor his horse left Buffalo on the day in question. Finally, it was determined by the justice of the peace that there was not sufficient evidence to warrant a conviction before a jury, nor did he find adequate ground to hold the defendant until he could answer to district court.

In other words, Frank Canton went free, for the meantime at least. He wasn’t off the hook for Tisdell’s murder; they just didn’t have enough evidence to hold him indefinitely. Despite Buffalo being full of men who wanted him dead, despite more than one man lying in wait to ambush Canton, nobody made a move.

That’s just how intimidating Frank was.

But Frank wasn’t stupid. He knew if he stayed in town any longer, somebody would eventually get drunk enough to have a go at him, possibly from ambush, and nobody can stay lucky forever. Frank saw the writing on the wall some time before and had sent his wife and daughters to Chicago.

This was before the deaths of Tisdell and Ranger Jones.

Now, fearing retribution and also fearing getting locked up in prison again, Frank would leave Wyoming to join his family in the Windy City. He’d remain there most of the winter, where sadly his youngest daughter Helen would pass away after contracting diphtheria.

In the meantime, Frank did make at least one trip west to Cheyenne to confer with the bosses, his handlers in the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, about that lingering murder accusation hanging over his head. He was a loyal soldier after all, and he had done their bidding, first as an inspector, then a sheriff, finally as a detective. If he did indeed 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 Tisdell and Jones, he likely did so on association orders.

Now it was time for them to pony up a little bit of protection, and to their credit, they did. They hired a very prominent attorney or attorneys to defend Canton just in case the charges against him were to be further pursued. As was predicted, another warrant for his arrest was issued.

What’s more, there was now a five thousand dollar bounty offered up by the Johnson County Commissioners for the arrest and conviction of Tisdell and Jones’s murderer.

In March 1892, Canton would be charged with first-degree murder in the death of John Tisdell. But thanks to friends in high places, Frank would not be pursued all the way over in Chicago. There was no worry about extradition, and his legal problems only existed in Wyoming and mostly just there in Johnson County.

Nevertheless, Frank’s high-profile lawyers did get his bond secured, an unprecedented thirty thousand dollars, which is the equivalent to nearly a million in today’s money. This bond would be put up by twenty-one separate members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. No longer fearing arrest, Frank Canton would return to Wyoming, and this time, hell was coming with him.

In the form of an army of hired guns from Texas, Canton and this bunch of mercenaries would invade Johnson County with a 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 list of, depending on sources, anywhere from nineteen to seventy names on it. The names of men who dared defy the powerful Wyoming Stock Growers Association. Some say Canton himself compiled the list and added a few names of his personal enemies, because why the hell not?

If the law wasn’t going to stop the so-called rustlers of Johnson County, then by God, Frank Canton would see what he could do. Back in 1884 over Montana way, there was this cattleman by the name of Granville Stuart who organized himself a vigilante committee that came to be known as Stuart’s Stranglers. This was in response to the same stuff we’ve been discussing.

Montana had its own version of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, the Montana Stock Growers Association, and they too had their hands full with rustlers and thieves. Fed up with all the nonsense, Granville and his Stranglers went on a murder spree, killing anywhere from twenty to a hundred rustlers or alleged rustlers.

It’s not like Stuart’s Stranglers were exactly all that concerned with proper judicial proceedings. Not only were Stuart’s Stranglers never held responsible for these lynchings, but Granville himself would go on to live a very long life, becoming an accomplished author and politician, never doing so much as one day in jail. It was his success and lack of accountability that would be the model that the Wyoming Stock Growers Association looked to for inspiration.

Although Frank Canton and the association had themselves a murder list, there was likely no serious consideration of killing everybody on it. The idea was that if they struck hard and fast into Johnson County and took out some of their most blatant opposition, the rest would simply scatter and leave the territory or at the very least start acting right.

We don’t know how many people for certain were on the list, but there were thirty-four names reported in an issue of the Chicago Herald, likely given to them by the association. That included the previously mentioned Jack Flagg and Nate Champion, along with the brother of the murdered Orley Ranger Jones.

Later in life, Canton would lie his ass off, saying that he and his men secured arrest warrants for ten to twelve of these so-called rustlers. This was not the case. The entire invasion was true vigilantism, done completely outside of the bounds of law, and it was done with the full support and blessing of Wyoming’s most elite.

Guys like then-Governor Amos Barber, US Senators Warren and Carey, even the bosses at the Union Pacific. Everybody who was anybody, meaning holding any type of influence or power, was squarely on the side of Frank Canton and these invaders.

Now, I have no doubt there was plenty of legitimate rustling going on in Johnson County, and once the jury stopped convicting people, I’m sure a lot of this theft became flagrant. A big “you” to the cattle barons. Were the large ranch operations provoked?

Yes. Was there a problem with cattle and horse theft? Sure.

But did this warrant taking the law into their own hands and attempting to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 dozens of men without any sort of a trial or due process? In my opinion, absolutely not.

If you’ll remember, Frank Canton had just spent the entire winter in Chicago while his lawyers tried to get rid of that pesky little murder charge hanging over his head. As he made his way back to Wyoming, one of his buddies was headed down south. Another former association detective, a guy named Tom Smith, was sent down to Texas on a recruiting mission.

His goal: hire a small army of mercenary gunslingers. I guess that even in those days, the idea was that Texas was still a breeding ground for killers. Remember, this was the 1890s.

Dodge City had been tamed for a long time. Tombstone was tamed. Deadwood, Lincoln County, hell, for all intents and purposes, the era known as the Wild West was mostly over.

Texas, however, particularly in places like El Paso, was still plenty rough around the edges. Interestingly enough, Tom Smith did not have to head all the way to El Paso or even Fort Worth. He did all of his recruiting in Paris, Texas, a little town less than twenty miles south of Indian Territory.

There was a federal courthouse there that had jurisdiction over the Chickasaw Nation, sort of a smaller-scale Texas version of Fort Smith, Arkansas.

The men that Tom Smith recruited were unemployed federal officers just hanging around hoping to catch a warrant they could serve up north across the Red River. It was a motley crew. You had some inexperienced guys, even some very young guys like the twenty-year-old Buck Garrett and his brother Jack.

And you had some very dangerous, experienced men, guys like Jeff Milton, David Booker, and George Tucker.

For what it’s worth, these Texas officers were told that their services were needed up in Wyoming to help put an end to a rustling epidemic. Whether or not any of them would have backed out had they known the truth, I don’t know. I’m also not sure if any of them balked at the killing once they were in Johnson County and figuring out what was what.

Finally, on April 5, 1892, this small army assembled in Cheyenne, Wyoming. All total, there were fifty-two invaders: the twenty or so hired guns from Texas, Frank Canton of course, some of his old association detective buddies, and about nineteen or twenty of the big ranch owners and managers.

The kind-of-sort-of leader of this whole brigade was none other than Frank Wolcott, the former Union Army officer. I say kind-of-sort-of because, long story short, he and Frank Canton started butting heads, both of them wanting to be in charge. Wolcott would end up making a big speech resigning his position of leadership for the good of the cause, but once in the field, he would still be calling a lot of the shots.

Thanks to author Bill O’Neal, we have a pretty good idea of the type of armament the invaders were packing. The association passed out a bunch of brand new . 44-90 Sharps rifles as well as a few .

38-55 Winchesters, both of which were more powerful than the . 44 caliber carbines that most of them Texas boys had. That said, a few of them did opt to keep their .

44-40s.

Various other long guns recorded among the invaders included a . 45-70, a . 40-60, a .

40-82, a plain old-fashioned shotgun, and even a . 44 Martini. As far as sidearms go, Colt .

45s won the day. Nevertheless, there were a few Colt . 44s in the mix as well as a Colt .

38, a . 55 Webley, along with a . 42 caliber revolver.

Thus armed, the invaders all loaded up in a private six-car train right there in Cheyenne that would haul them all the way to Casper, where they would unload and continue via horseback. To prepare the way, others were busy cutting telegraph lines in and out of Buffalo, isolating the town with the so-called rustlers.

It was Buffalo that was the real target. The original plan was to strike the town hard and fast, to ride in and take the rustlers by surprise, scorched earth style. However, when the vigilantes were on their way, they got word there was a whole bunch of rustlers holed up at the KC Ranch.

This caused even more arguments.

Canton and his buddy Hess wanted to stay the course and keep advancing on Buffalo, but the others, like Wolcott and association member Billy Irvine, wanted to clean out the wolf den at the KC. In the end, those in favor of attacking the KC won the day and likely doomed the entire operation.

On the morning of April 9, the invaders surrounded the ranch, only to find that just two of their targets were holed up there: Nate Champion and another cowboy named Nick Ray. There were actually four men in total, but the other two were just trappers who happened to be in the area. One of them came out of the small cabin with a bucket hoping to fetch some water and was apprehended as soon as he hit the tree line.

Next up was the other trapper. He too left the cabin and was nabbed by Frank Canton and the others. Luckily for both of these guys, they were able to convince the vigilantes that they were just innocent fur trappers, and as such, they were left unharmed.

The same could not be said for Champion and Nick Ray.

When Nick finally emerged from the cabin, still unaware of the danger outside, one of the Texas gunmen drilled him through and through. Ray, still on his feet, tried to make it back into the cabin but collapsed just inside the door as the invaders all opened up fire at the same time. Nate Champion ran over, bullets snapping all around him, and pulled Ray back inside, slamming the door shut.

The fight was on. For the next hour or so, round after round would be pumped into the tiny cabin, with Nate firing back sporadically just to keep the attackers at bay and let them know he was still alive. During some of the lulls in the fighting, Nate began scrawling out a record of the events in a little notebook.

I think he saw right off that he wasn’t going to make it, as outnumbered as he was, and I guess he wanted to leave a record of what really happened.

“It is now about 2 hours since the first shot,” Champion wrote. “Nick is still alive. They are still shooting and are all around the house.

Boys, there is bullets coming in like hell.” Continuing even later, Champion would write: “Nick is dead. He died about 9:00.

I see smoke down at the stable and I think they have fired it. I don’t think they intend to let me get away this time. Boys, I feel pretty lonesome just about now.

I wish there was someone here with me so we could watch all sides at once.”

Much to Champion’s surprise, the gunfire from the invaders was soon diverted from him to a wagon rushing by in the distance. Nate had no idea who this was, but the association gunmen immediately recognized the interloper as Jack Flagg, the so-called King of the Rustlers. He rode through not knowing what was going on, and considering him an easy target, the invaders opened up fire.

Luckily for Flagg, he was able to get away, and much to the chagrin of the vigilantes, he became a Johnson County Paul Revere, spreading news as quickly as he could that they were under invasion. Still, the attackers continued to lay siege to the cabin. Once again against Frank Canton’s advisement, he urged breaking off the attack and moving on to Buffalo, but was once again overruled by Wolcott and them others who wanted to finish the job at hand.

And finish it they did. I guess Flagg in his haste to get away had abandoned his wagon, and the invaders seized it, filling it full of straw and wood and shoving it against Champion’s cabin-turned-fortress and setting it on fire. “The house is all fired,” Nate wrote.

“Goodbye boys, if I never see you again.”

Moments later, the bravest man in Johnson County, as one paper would call Nate Champion, bolted from the cabin, Winchester in hand, racing through the smoke with bullets whizzing past him. Nate pumped his legs and somehow miraculously made his way across a meadow and towards the gulch without getting hit. Unfortunately, there were some of the hired guns from Texas stationed at the gulch in question.

Champion ran straight to them and was able to squeeze off just one shot before he was riddled with bullets. In Frank Canton’s own words, “Champion was determined not to surrender. He came out fighting and died game.”

Now Nate, from his vantage point in the cabin, was not able to inflict a whole hell of a lot of damage. They just weren’t giving the man any easy shots, and hell, it was fifty to one.

That said, he was able to shoot a couple of the Texans, one through the arm and the other through the leg. As far as I know, they were the only invaders injured during this fight. As for the guy that likely fired the fatal shot that killed Champion, it’s widely thought to have been Jeff Milton, a former Texas Ranger, sheriff, and Deputy US Marshal with a bit of a temper.

There is another man who was rumored to have fired that fatal shot that took Nate Champion down, and we will reveal his name in just a moment. For now, though, the invaders would have to push on, having killed a good man and wasted an entire day doing so. But not before scribbling a note of their own, one that read “Cattle thieves beware,” and pinning it to Nate’s body, leaving him unburied.

That evening, the vigilantes would suffer their first death. A big old boy named Texan Jim Dudley. I guess his horse bucked him, causing his rifle barrel to fall to the ground where it discharged, the bullet shattering his leg.

By the time Dudley was able to receive proper medical attention, the wound had turned gangrenous. They had to amputate, and he went into shock during the procedure, and that was it for Texan Jim.

The next morning, following the tragic death of Texan Jim, it was time for the invaders to finally attack the town of Buffalo. But the citizens were more than ready. One of the association spies in town met the invaders as they approached and urged them to turn back, saying that everybody in town was gunning for them and that if they valued their lives, they’d get to cover.

Oh boy, not with this mercenary army envisioned the day prior. Now it was they who started to get nervous. Not Canton though.

He still wanted to attack. That was his main goal this whole time, to just attack the hell out of Buffalo. It’s crazy when you think about it.

Calling these guys simply a lynch mob or vigilantes is a little bit of an understatement. Fifty-plus men, heavily armed and with the full backing of every politician in the territory, men whose ranks included some of the richest people in Wyoming along with a bunch of hired killers they brought in via train from out of state. They literally invade an entire county with a 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 list, and they cut all the telegraph wires into the town that they want to sack.

And Frank Canton currently lived nearby. That’s the crazy part. He had actually lived in the town of Buffalo for several years.

For the entire time he was sheriff, Canton walked the streets of Buffalo every day, rubbing shoulders with the townsfolk, probably tipping his hat to the ladies, watching the little children play, did business in the stores, got his haircut, used the livery stables. These were his neighbors.

And here he was ready to lay waste to the entire town, or at the very least put all those civilians in danger. People with whom he was once tasked with protecting. He was ready and willing to put them and their families in harm’s way by turning Buffalo into a war zone.

Why? Was he really that angry over some rich people’s horses getting stolen or just some unbranded cattle?

Was it a power play, and he was just bitter at not being able to get the convictions with Johnson County juries? Was he mad that they didn’t want him for sheriff again? There are some that theorize Canton was in such a tizzy to attack Buffalo with the hopes of getting rid of any evidence that could link him to the murders of Ranger Jones and John Tisdell.

On the other hand, Canton defenders think he simply wanted to see to his property. Like I said, his ranch was just a few miles away, and he hadn’t been there in quite some time. And believe it or not, this theory actually does hold water, as Frank’s home would indeed be vandalized over the next few days.

Nonetheless, the invaders would not attack Buffalo. Calmer heads prevailed, and the vigilantes fell back to the TA Ranch, where they had spent the previous night. And my, how the turntables do turn.

The invaders now became the defenders. This is where Major Wolcott really shined. He started ordering folks around, and in no time flat, the ranch was a mini fortress.

Trenches were dug, breastworks erected, hell, they even augured holes in the walls of the cabin and barn so they could shoot out of them. Good thing they did too, because they were going to need a damn fortress to withstand what was coming. A whole lot of pissed-off Johnson County locals, nearly two hundred of them, all armed to the teeth, and toting a cannon.

Yes, a cannon.

Okay, so they didn’t really have a cannon, but they almost did. Johnson County Sheriff Red Angus did indeed go to nearby Fort McKinney and try to requisition a cannon, but the Army said nuh-uh, no sir, we’re just going to sit this one out. So it became a long-range sniping sort of thing.

The invaders were well dug in and fortified thanks to Major Wolcott, and the army of so-called rustlers simply started trading sporadic rifle fire throughout the day and the days that followed.

Per excavations done on site years later, numerous shell casings were found with plenty of empty whiskey bottles, so I’m assuming them boys were well hydrated during the fight as well. Now the invaders did send out a couple of messengers on the sly, hoping to get help. Finally, influential rancher and association bigwig Morton Frewen got word of what was going on and began pulling strings.

He got ahold of the governor, and the governor got ahold of the senators, and they all went to the damn President of the United States of America himself, Benjamin Harrison. I always forget that guy was president, by the way. Died of the flu, Benjamin Harrison, just four years after leaving office.

Anyway, long story short, the commanding officer of Fort McKinney would have to get involved whether he wanted to or not, as he soon received orders to get over to the TA and put an end to the nonsense.

Just in the nick of time too. The Johnson County rustlers, and I am using that term in quotations, more accurately I should say the pissed-off residents of Johnson County that didn’t appreciate a bunch of mercenaries invading their territory, were about to rub the invaders out. And not in a good way.

They had dynamite at this point, and they had constructed a quote-unquote “God Devil,” a little contraption that they dubbed “The Ark of Safety.”

Two wagons lashed together and reinforced with eight-inch logs and bales of hay stacked six feet high on the top. This could conceal and provide cover for up to possibly as many as forty men as they advanced on the ranch with the aforementioned dynamite. And just as they were about to light it, here comes the dadgum cavalry, blowing bugles and ordering a ceasefire and finally confirming with Sheriff Red Angus and his field commander, a fellow known as Arapaho Brown.

The big question soon became what the hell to do with all these invaders, who at this point were more than willing to surrender. The Army couldn’t just hand them over to the citizens of Johnson County, not in good conscience. I mean, hell, they’d have strung them all up at that very moment.

Finally, it was agreed upon that the vigilantes would surrender to military authority and come under their protection.

I referenced that photo earlier of the Johnson County invaders. Feel free to Google it. Pretty interesting photo.

They’re all pictured in it, all fifty-some-odd men, all the hired guns, Frank Canton, Wolcott, they’re all there looking pretty damn smug considering that they nearly just got themselves killed.

Now I’m not sure, but I think that photo was taken at Fort McKinney, where the military initially took the invaders following the rescue. And there was a fear of the rustlers attacking the fort. Old Sheriff Angus actually showed up after discovering what had happened to Nate Champion.

So the vigilantes ended up getting transferred to Sheridan and then to Fort Russell, which was closer to Cheyenne.

While this was the defining moment of the Johnson County War, it was not the end of hostilities. The Northern Wyoming Farmers and Stock Growers Association, remember them, well, they planned an early roundup in defiance of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. In hopes of countering this, the cattle barons had some US deputies sent in.

One of them by the name of George Wellman was shot and killed from ambush just about a month after the big fight at the TA Ranch.

And I mentioned a moment ago that there were fears Fort McKinney would be attacked when the invaders were taken there. Well, even after the vigilantes were transferred, there was still lingering animosity towards the military outpost. Many of the citizens of Johnson County resented the Army’s involvement with what they considered a civilian matter, and someone even set the damn fort on fire, resulting in a few buildings being burned down and a few exploded powder kegs.

And then finally, in May of 1893, Nate Champion’s brother Dudley was shot and killed by association detective Mike Shaughnessy. Mike would claim that Dudley came gunning for him and drew first, and that he killed the man in self-defense. Others say that Shaughnessy killed Champion in cold blood, getting the drop on him and doing him in before the brother could exact revenge.

Who knows. Dudley would be the last death in the Johnson County War, though. And interestingly enough, his killer, Mike Shaughnessy, would be the last living participant in the war, not dying until 1954.

As for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, they’re still around today, and to their credit, in the years that followed the Johnson County War, they’re no longer murdering people. That’s always nice. And they’ve also become a little bit more inclusive, opening up the books for the smaller ranchers.

As for Canton, his time in Wyoming was coming to an end. I mean, he couldn’t exactly just go back to Buffalo as if nothing happened, right? Might make buying groceries just a tad bit awkward.

Now Frank would accidentally shoot himself while in Cheyenne. He and the other invaders were put up in a large auditorium, but they were free to come and go as they pleased.

One morning at around 3:30, after what I assume was a long night of drinking, Canton was showing off his pistol when he dropped it and it went off, the bullet striking him just a few inches above the ankle. When he actually had to go to court, he had to be carried in on a stretcher and propped up on pillows.

Now neither he nor any of the other invaders would face prosecution for what they did. They’d be brought up on charges, but there were zero convictions. I guess money talks, right?

Frank still had the issue of John Tisdell’s murder hanging over his head, but that was squashed as well. The main witness against him, Charlie Basch, that old boy who saw Frank on the side of the road with a pistol in his hand, well, he disappeared.

What it all boiled down to was the state not having enough evidence to take Canton to trial. It was Basch’s word against many a prominent citizen who vouched for Frank’s whereabouts, and like I said, Basch disappeared, so he wasn’t going to be taken the stand either. Now as sinister as that sounds, Basch was not made to disappear, all “aha Mafia style.”

He left Johnson County still very much alive and would stay that way for quite some time.

Matter of fact, he’d speak out again as late as 1935 and claim for the very first time ever that there was another man with Frank Canton that fateful day on the road when Tisdell was murdered. And that mystery man was none other than notorious killer Tom Horn.

Tom was born in Missouri in 1860, so he’s about a decade younger than Frank Canton. Escaping from a bit of a traumatic childhood, Horn headed out west while still a teenager and got a job with the US Army, first as a packer and then as a scout and interpreter for Chief of Scouts Al Sieber. Spending the next few years working for Sieber, Tom Horn would participate in various campaigns against the Apache, was there at Geronimo’s surrender in 1886, and he gained a bit of a reputation after killing a man in a duel over a prostitute.

Killing never seemed to be hard for Tom Horn. Matter of fact, later in life he’d brag about it, saying that killing men was his specialty, they looked at it like a business proposition, and that he had the corner on the market. After the Apache issue was settled, Horn kind of wandered, did a little bit of cow punching and prospecting, even wore a badge for a bit before taking on some jobs for the large cattle outfits.

Horn took part in Arizona’s Pleasant Valley War before finally being hired by the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1890, working out of their Denver office. As such, when the Johnson County War kicked off, the agency sent Horn in under the assumed name of Tom Hale, and it was in this undercover role that Horn went to work for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.

He was most likely in Johnson County when Tisdell and Jones were murdered, and the killing from ambush is more of his MO than that of Frank Canton. And it’s not just Basch who said that Tom Horn was the one who killed these two men. Another former Pinkerton and future topic here at the Wild West Extravaganza, Charlie Siringo, also claimed it was Horn, and he said he got this information from old man Pinkerton himself.

And it’s the reason that Tom was eventually fired from the detective agency.

For what it’s worth, there’s no way of proving any of this. Basch’s testimony changed with each telling. He didn’t mention Tom Horn until four decades after the fact.

And let’s face it, Charlie Siringo ain’t the best of sources. Some people claim that it was Tom Horn who was sent to Texas to hire the mercenaries, and we know this is not true. Others say that he accompanied the invaders as they made their charge into Johnson County, and that it was even him who fired that shot that killed Champion.

Not sure if there’s any proof of any of this other than circumstantial and anecdotal stories. He certainly wasn’t among the fifty-two men arrested and brought into Cheyenne. But if Tom didn’t do it, that would once again make Frank Canton the prime suspect.

Now who the hell knows, man. These murders will likely remain unsolved forever.

As for Canton, he would in due course find his way up to the great white North. In the meantime, a new opportunity beckoned, this one down Indian Territory way. Seems an old friend of Frank Canton had got himself appointed a sheriff in a brand new county, and he needed a few good men to come lend him a hand.

Only problem was, Oklahoma is mighty close to Texas, and despite serving as a lawman for the past decade, Canton was still a wanted fugitive in the Lone Star State.

Frank’s buddy down in Oklahoma, the new sheriff, was a guy named Frank Lake. And if that name sounds familiar, well then you’ve been paying attention. Lake was the guy who, way back when, rode into Jacksboro with Canton on the fateful day that Frank got into that fight with them Buffalo Soldiers.

It was Lake who helped Canton ride out of town under a hell of bullets. It was Lake who took a round to the leg when the soldiers pursued the pair, and it was on Lake’s horse that Frank escaped, leaving his wounded partner behind.

And despite this less-than-chivalrous act, the two had kept in touch and maintained their friendship over the years. Hell, Lake was one of the few people who knew Canton’s real identity. Now Frank Lake had no real experience as a lawman to speak of, and that’s where Canton came in, taking the position of undersheriff in the spring of 1894.

After his failed bid for the job up in Alaska, both he and Lake were also sworn in as Deputy US Marshals, which permitted them to chase after bad guys beyond the confines of the newly designated Q County. Yes, Q County. And no, we ain’t talking about QAnon.

This is present-day Pawnee County, Oklahoma, just northwest of Tulsa.

The Pawnee tribe, at least some of them, were relocated there in the 1870s, and in 1891 they agreed to take land allotments, with the remainder of the land being open to non-native settlers. This area, collectively known as the Cherokee Outlet, was then divided up into O, L, K, P, Q, and N counties. A few years later, the residents voted to change the name to Pawnee County, which for the sake of simplicity is what I will refer to it as.

And that’s your little Oklahoma history lesson of the day. Sorry it’s not more riveting, but hey, we are talking about Oklahoma. All right, there’s only so much I can do.

And yeah, I did say that Sheriff Lake was appointed, not elected, on account of Oklahoma not yet being a state.

Now this would be a dangerous assignment for Canton, as the area was literally infested with outlaws. Real outlaws, as opposed to the so-called rustlers of Johnson County. This is where the Dalton Gang was based out of, or at least it was until their fateful day in Coffeyville.

And their remnants, the Doolin-Dalton Gang, actually held up the bank there in the town of Pawnee a little over a year prior to Canton showing up.

Hell, things got so bad that the county commissioners even called upon the governor to enact martial law. So needless to say, Frank Canton had his work cut out for him. And you better believe he hit the ground running, doing what he did best and chasing down horse thieves and bandits of all varieties.

Less than a month after Canton arrived, a local paper, the Pawnee Times-Democrat, had this to say: “Who caused the horse and cattle stealing to stop? Frank Lake. Who is it that stopped the chicken stealing, house breaking, and pilfering at night?

Frank Lake. Who causes the merchants and farmers to sleep sound at night from L to the creek line? Frank Lake.

Who causes the honest people to smile and the thieves to tremble at the sound of his name? Frank Lake.”

Now considering that Lake had zero experience wearing a badge prior to his appointment as sheriff, I think it’s safe to say that it was Canton who was really getting all these results. I got to also assume that he did not have the same issues in getting convictions as he had up there in Johnson County. He was finally, at long last, going after real criminals, and the courts over in Fort Smith, Arkansas, didn’t exactly balk.

Handed down stiff sentences.

Only one problem, though. Indian Territory is mighty close to Texas, and one thing Canton could never forget was the fact that he was a wanted fugitive right across that Red River. Only a matter of time before someone from his past recognizes him or finds out his true identity.

And then what? It wouldn’t take much for a group of Rangers to trot on up there and haul Frank’s ass back to the Huntsville State Pen.

Also, Canton was beginning to wonder if maybe his little secret hadn’t been discovered by those in high office. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t receive that Marshal’s appointment in Alaska that he so coveted. Either way, if he ever wanted to stop looking over his shoulder and, you know, do something more with his life than just being an undersheriff, Frank would have to make a move.

And as fate would have it, his freedom and his future now rested on the good graces of a hog. James Stephen Hogg, to be exact, the twentieth governor of the great state of Texas and the only man able to grant Frank Canton, AKA Joe Horner, a pardon.

Fun fact: Governor Hogg had a daughter with the unfortunate first name of Ima. Ima Hogg. Hapless handle aside, Ima enjoyed quite the successful life as a philanthropist, mental health advocate, and art collector.

And despite rumors to the contrary, she did not have a sister named Ura.

Now there are two different accounts as to how Canton obtained his pardon. The first goes that Frank returned to Texas and placed himself at the mercy of a judge, William Buford Plemons, who knew Frank back in his outlaw days. In turn, Judge Plemons went to Governor Hogg, who demanded to see Frank in the flesh, refusing to pardon someone without so much as an in-person meeting.

Now this was a risky gamble for Frank, as there were no guarantees. Depending on how Hogg’s day was going, he could have simply had Canton thrown back in prison on a whim. As a means of insurance, Frank shoved a revolver in his boot, claiming that if there was an attempt to send him back to the penitentiary, then Texas would need a new governor come morning.

Turns out no arsenal was needed, and Hogg readily agreed to a pardon, especially after taking Canton’s law enforcement career into consideration. The other version is that Frank received some help from another old friend, Burk Burnett. You may remember him as being the cowboy whom Canton accompanied up the trail for the first time when he was still a teenager.

In the intervening years, Burnett had done very well for himself and was now a successful rancher with plenty of powerful friends. Word is that Burk invited Governor Hogg to his ranch for a coyote hunt, and that Canton acted as the governor’s guide, without Hogg knowing his true identity of course. During the hunt, Frank made one hell of an impression, as he always seemed to do when getting buddy-buddy with the rich and powerful, and Hogg extended him an invitation to the governor’s mansion in Austin.

Imagine Hogg’s surprise when Frank showed up shortly after the hunt, coincidentally at the same time the governor was scheduled to meet with the wanted fugitive Joe Horner. Hogg greeted Frank warmly, obviously happy to see him, but asked if he wouldn’t mind waiting a moment as he had an important meeting he had to attend. Canton then smiled and explained to Hogg that he was the appointment.

Whichever way it happened, Canton was ultimately granted a full pardon. He would end up handing over a thick sheaf of documents all showing what a fine upstanding citizen he had been for the past few years, as well as a two-word written plea. Worth noting that Frank would take a few liberties here, claiming that he was years younger than he really was when he robbed that bank over in Comanche, trying to act as if it was just a youthful indiscretion and that his only role was holding the horses.

As to robbing that stagecoach, he said he was starving at the time and he only took enough money to get clear of the state and start over anew. He also failed to mention any of his legal problems up there in Wyoming, you know, the accusations of him murdering folks in cold blood or leading a mercenary lynch mob and attacking innocent civilians. And it worked.

Like I said, full pardon.

No longer would Frank have to worry about being arrested, at least not for any of his past crimes as Joe Horner. He would continue to live under the name Frank Canton, and he would most definitely return to Pawnee County with a renewed fervor when it came to pursuing criminals. A little bit too much of a fervor, in fact.

Canton would be accused more than once as being a little overzealous.

Likewise, in his role as undersheriff, he began clashing with US Deputy Marshals working out of Fort Smith. Disputes mostly caused by them arguing over prisoners. One encounter even had Canton arrest a couple of deputies and toss them in jail.

It was also during this time that Canton shot a man in the head.

He went looking to serve a warrant on somebody believed to be holed up in a Pawnee livery stable. This assumption proved correct, and Canton quickly and without incident cuffed the man in question. Everything was going good until the owner of the livery showed up, a guy by the name of Alonzo McCool.

And I’m not making that name up.

Now Frank and Alonzo just flat out did not like each other, and Canton had long suspected McCool of passing stolen horses through his stables. Story goes that on this particular evening, Alonzo was rather inebriated and began verbally tearing into Canton, escalating matters further by reaching out and open-palm slapping the lawman in the face.

Now Frank, when apprehending his prisoner, had taken a seat on a stool and removed his revolver. Upon getting pimp-slapped, Canton would immediately pull out a .41 caliber derringer that he had in his pocket and shoot McCool square in the forehead, dropping him where he stood.

Hard to find fault here. I’m not condoning the shooting of anybody, much less an unarmed man, but talk about provocation. You know, as a guy, I’m not sure there’s more of a blatant insult than getting slapped in the face by another man.

It’s hard to let that pass.

Believe it or not, though, Alonzo would survive. The bullet simply glanced around under the man’s skin without penetrating the skull. He’d remain unconscious for about twelve hours but make a mostly full recovery.

Now this derringer story Frank would admit later in life. At the time of the shooting, however, he told authorities that he was attempting to club McCool over the head with the gun when it accidentally went off.

The same excuse, by the way, that another Pawnee lawman would use about a month later after shooting somebody in the leg. At any rate, Canton was cleared of all wrongdoing and threw the ineffectual derringer away in disgust.

Now Frank would end up serving as both undersheriff and Deputy US Marshal in the Pawnee area for a little over five years. It was he who took down the dangerous Shelley Brothers over in the Creek Nation, using the same tactic employed against Nate Champion. The bandit brothers were holed up in a cabin, and after a long standoff, Canton smoked them out using a blazing wagon loaded with hay and a few gallons of oil.

As soon as the cabin began burning, the brothers ran out with their hands raised. Coincidentally, it was one of these men, L. Shelley, who provided the infamous Cherokee Bill with a smuggled pistol that he used to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 a guard during an unsuccessful jailbreak over in Fort Smith.

In June 1894, Frank went after career criminal and cattle thief Ben Cravens, locating the outlaw holed up in the Osage Hills. Canton and a posse waited patiently, but nobody emerged. Finally tired of waiting, Canton walked up and knocked on the cabin door.

A woman answered but refused to open up, so Frank kicked the door in, knocking it off its hinges. Inside was Cravens, pistol in hand, but he was so surprised that he surrendered.

Perhaps you’ve seen the movie “Cattle Annie and Little Britches” starring Diane Lane, Amanda Plummer, and Burt Lancaster. This 1981 film was based on the very real female bandits and associates of the Doolin Gang, Jenny Stevenson and Anna McDoulet, AKA Little Britches. In “Cattle Annie,” well, it was not Frank Canton who initially apprehended these ladies, but when Little Britches escaped captivity over there in Pawnee, it was on Canton’s horse that she fled.

The next day, Frank along with a few other deputies tracked Little Britches down to a farmhouse where she was hiding with Cattle Annie. The she-devils put up a fight and traded a few bullets with the lawman but soon ran out of steam and gave up.

And then you have Frank Canton’s biggest nemesis during this period: the Dunn Brothers. Oh boy. There were five of them: Bill, or Bee; Dunn; John; George; Alfred, who went by Calvin; and Charles, who went by Dal.

And they, like the ladies we just discussed, were also aligned with the Doolin Gang, AKA the less famous Wild Bunch.

Now I could do an entire series on this gang, and I probably will. From the original Dalton crew who were absolutely decimated during the failed bank robbery in Coffeyville, Kansas, back in 1892, to the formation of the Doolin-Dalton Gang and how it morphed into the Doolin-Dalton Gang, was surviving Dalton brother Bill Dalton.

If you’re a member of the Wild West Extravaganza Patreon, go ahead and listen to the old episode I did on Dynamite Dick Clifton, another member of this outfit and somebody who would at one point be arrested by Frank Canton. And of course, of course, you also had Doolin Gang member George “Bitter Creek” Newcomb, who just so happened to be dating the sister of the Dunn Brothers, historical hottie Rose Dunn, AKA Rose of the Cimarron.

That historical hottie comment does need an asterisk, by the way. There’s a widely distributed picture purported to be Rose Dunn, and I got to admit she’s kind of cute. Well, shout out to listener RPG, who recently brought to my attention that that’s probably not her in the photo.

And according to Michael Rutter’s “Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the Old West,” the photo is allegedly a prisoner who posed to illustrate a story on the real Rose of the Cimarron.

However, according to a 2021 article on True West magazine written by Robert G. McCubbin, when you compare that picture to a verified photo of Rose Dunn when she was in her seventies, it’s a match. But y’all be knowing how I feel about photo comparison studies, so who knows.

Anyway, Rose Dunn’s brothers were more than a little shady. Like I said, they were associates of the Doolin Bunch, but they also kept one leg in the legitimate world by operating a boarding house in Ingalls and a meat market in Pawnee. And Frank Canton hated them, saying that they were quote “the worst” end quote.

Yeah, he actually said that they were the worst. He also said they were vicious, bloodthirsty, very cunning, and the worst men who ever infested Oklahoma or for that matter any other country.

Okay, so what the hell did these Dunn Brothers do to gain Canton’s eye, other than being criminals? Well, in my opinion, it’s all because they made him look bad. Frank had actually built himself a case against the brothers and approached them offering a deal.

He wouldn’t arrest them or charge them with anything so long as they turned snitch on the Doolin Gang. You know, you help me catch these guys and I’ll pretend like I don’t know about all this other stuff you’ve been doing.

And the Dunn Brothers agreed. Kind of. Turns out they were playing both sides.

They’d feed Canton a little bit of information here and there, but they also let the Doolin boys know when Frank was about. More than once they had Canton out in the bush hiding, sometimes for weeks at a time, doing nothing more but twiddling his thumbs as the Doolin failed to materialize.

And then to add insult to injury, the Dunn Brothers went to work for Bill Tilghman and Heck Thomas, two members of the famed Three Guardsmen, helping them to track down the Doolin Bunch. And it was under Thomas and Tilghman that the Dunns gunned down Bitter Creek Newcomb and Charlie Pierce, thus depriving Frank Canton of all that reward money.

Frank felt like it was he who should have been the one to do Pierce and Newcomb in, especially considering the amount of time he spent in the field looking for him. And this jealousy would only continue to grow when in August of 1896, Boone led Heck Thomas to the hideout of Bill Doolin.

Now Doolin had been arrested by Bill Tilghman about a month and a half prior, but he escaped. Once Dunn and Heck Thomas caught up to the desperado, that was all she wrote. Bill Doolin was cut down with a shotgun blast, and the Dalton-Doolin Gang was for all intents and purposes no more.

Not only would this cause a simmering resentment between Frank Canton and the Three Guardsmen, but his hatred for the Dunn Brothers was really ramped up at this point. Had it not been for them jerking his chain for the better part of a year and then turning around and helping out Heck and Tilghman, it would have been Canton raking in all that reward money. Or leastways, that’s how Frank felt.

And it all came to a head on November 6, 1896. Bill Dunn rode into Pawnee, seemingly unconcerned about Canton’s rage, and for good reason. Dunn now wore his very own Deputy US Marshal badge, making him Frank’s equal as far as authority was concerned.

Sadly, he’d soon be laying in the street with Frank Canton standing over him with a smoking revolver.

As usual, accounts differ. Even Frank had a couple of different versions of what had happened. He claimed that he and Bill came face to face on the streets of Pawnee and that Dunn cursed him and went for his gun.

Per Canton’s memoirs: “He had his hand on his revolver but had not yet drawn it. When I glanced at his face I saw murder in his eyes and I knew he intended to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 me. I drew my revolver instantly and fired.

The bullet struck him almost square in the forehead. As he dropped he pulled his revolver which fell on the sidewalk near his body. As he lay on his back dying he was working the trigger finger on his right hand.”

Contradicting his own words years later, Frank would say that he and Bill Dunn did not speak with each other at all, that they just locked eyes before Dunn went for his pistol, only to have it get snagged up in his clothes. This gave Frank enough time to drill Bee straight through the head. He would also claim that Dunn was wearing a breastplate made out of a steel plow, forcing him to go for a head shot.

So, grain of salt.

For what it’s worth, the Dunn family would maintain that Bee was taken by surprise, that Frank hid next to the meat market there in Pawnee, and when Dunn walked by, Canton slipped up behind him, called out his name, and shot him just above the brim of his hat as he turned. So there you go. Frank’s version does seem a bit suspect, especially the parts about the steel plate and the twitching trigger finger.

But there were supposedly witnesses. Another lawman, Charles Colcord, backed up the story about Bee’s pistol getting hung up in either his suspenders or belt, as well as saying that he had never seen anybody die as hard as Dunn did, saying that he would shove out first with one leg and then the other, grit his teeth so hard you could hear it from thirty feet away, and at the same time he would work the trigger finger on his right hand.

As tends to be the case, Frank Canton would not be charged with any wrongdoing here, and he would continue to persecute the remaining Dunn Brothers, some of whom were still riding for Heck Thomas as posse members. Canton even sent word to Thomas to deliver the brothers to him, a request that Heck won one hundred percent ignored.

At one point, hearing that Heck Thomas was camped on the Arkansas River some sixteen miles east of Pawnee, Frank assembled a posse of his own and rode out to meet him. The two groups would play a bit of hide and seek for several days, but ultimately nothing came of the 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇. Goes without saying that there was no love lost between Heck Thomas and Canton.

By the late 1890s, however, Frank’s time in Pawnee County was coming to an end. For a while there, he had been mostly focusing on federal work as he teamed up with another deputy named Steve Burke. The two men even had their own special letterhead and an office above the Pawnee courthouse.

At the same time, Canton’s friendship with Sheriff Frank Lake was turning sour, especially when the two men got to drinking. Remember, like I said earlier, these guys go all the way back to Texas in the 1870s, and when the liquor began flowing, old bitter feelings came bubbling to the surface, namely Frank’s guilty conscience about leaving Lake behind as he made a getaway on his wounded friend’s horse.

Evidently, even twenty years later, despite Frank Lake recruiting Canton for the job of undersheriff, this was still a bit of a sore spot. Story goes that the two men would often quarrel when drunk, and at least on one occasion things nearly turned deadly. The two men had their guns drawn on each other as Canton attempted to set Lake’s beard on fire, with Lake going him on, before the pair were finally separated.

Now back on the first episode in this series, I did tease the idea that Frank would struggle with the drink for years to come. This is something I noticed when researching Canton, and there are a few occasions you’ll hear about coming up where it really cost him, like the time he almost lost his foot in the summer of 1895 as he was drunkenly transporting some prisoners.

In fact, Frank was so inebriated on this occasion that he fell off the wagon, no pun intended, and his right foot got caught up in the brake and twisted his ankle around. Luckily for him, the prisoners were able to jump out and get Canton loose, and it turned out to be just a severe ankle sprain. But things could have been much worse.

As it were, Frank had to endure a very embarrassing ride to Pawnee as the prisoners he was escorting drove him back.

Nevertheless, when sober, Canton not only worked well with Sheriff Frank Lake, but he evidently was also one hell of a Deputy US Marshal. Matter of fact, when the Marshal Service began making budget cuts and there were a series of layoffs, Frank consistently made the cut and kept his job. But like I said, his time in Oklahoma was coming to an end, partly due once again to politics.

When Republican William McKinley became the twenty-fifth President of the United States, this meant not only a new Attorney General but also a new governor for Oklahoma. And without wasting too much time and going into too much detail, due to some previous election tampering, there was a clerk sent from the new District Attorney’s office to investigate the Marshal Service there in Oklahoma.

It seems that certain deputies were being accused of misappropriating funds, one of whom was our own Frank Canton. And these weren’t just empty accusations, as Frank W. himself admitted to padding the accounts, stuff like charging for mileage that he didn’t actually travel and meals for prisoners that were never fed and posse members that Canton did not really hire.

As such, by June of 1897, Frank M. Canton was fired from his job as Deputy US Marshal. His boss, Patrick Nagle, had tried to protect him, even going so far as to stall his termination, but to no avail.

Nagle would write: “I allowed him to remain on the force for the reason that he had always been a good officer. For more than 20 years was always called upon when any dangerous work had to be done. Outside of what he admitted in his statement his work had always been first class so far as I know.

He had at one time drank to excess but about 6 months ago he stopped entirely and I felt like helping him all I could.”

Nonetheless, Canton was out, and he didn’t take the news all that well. The investigator that brought the charges against him, a T. C.

Taylor, had to start traveling with armed guards after Frank threatened his life. And once again, Alaska beckoned.

Now pushing fifty, Canton knew that he was running out of time to make his mark on the world, and realistically, how much longer could he spend countless hours in the saddle riding all over rough territory chasing down bad guys? That said, his ambitions regarding Alaska were no longer as grandiose as they had been in the past. He would now settle for a job as a mere deputy up there in the New Frontier, as opposed to the Marshal appointment he yearned for all them years prior.

He pulled some strings. Hell, he had been pulling strings even before the investigation into his spending habits. Guess Frank saw the writing on the wall before the election.

P. B. Weare, Frank’s old employer at the meat packing plant, had an interest in the North American Transportation and Trade Company, also known as the N.

A. T. & T.

, working out of Alaska. And what’s more, Weare knew the US Marshal stationed in Sitka, Alaska.

From there, things moved very quickly. Frank was officially dismissed as deputy in Oklahoma on July 27, 1897. By July 30, just three days later, he bid his wife Annie and daughter Ruby goodbye and hopped on a train bound for the Northwest.

His job as Deputy US Marshal in Alaska was not yet official, but in the meantime, he was to be on the N. A. T.

& T. payroll. Plus, there was always the chance he’d strike it rich.

I mean, at this point, the Alaskan Gold Rush was in full swing. Much like the 49ers a few decades before, many a hopeful was rushing up north looking to find that color. Frank would leave Seattle on a steamer, and following a two-day stopover at Dutch Harbor, he arrived at the town of St.

Michael on the Alaskan mainland.

Once a US military post, St. Michael became a major gateway to the Alaskan interior during the Gold Rush days. Currently boasting a population of less than five hundred, most of whom are indigenous Inupiat, the town would have been booming in 1897 when Frank arrived.

It’s there that Canton and some friends loaded up on supplies and secured their passage up the Yukon River to the interior, where they’d winter at Rampart City.

And this is the real Alaska. I’ll put it to you like this: when I type in St. Michael, Alaska, and Rampart, Alaska, on Google Maps, there are no directions.

Even now, you can’t even drive from one city to the other. I’m assuming, like in many places in Alaska, you’d have to fly in. Canton did not have that luxury.

This was nearly a four-hundred-mile trip as the crow flies, but Frank didn’t have wings, just a small steamboat and a couple of Eskimo guides.

Now Frank’s original destination was Circle City and then ultimately Dawson City up in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Unfortunately for him, the Yukon River began to freeze, so he and his buddies were forced to winter there in Rampart, about one hundred sixty miles northwest of present-day Fairbanks, which at the time did not yet exist.

Upon arrival, Canton had him a nice little snug fourteen-by-eight cabin constructed, complete with a Yukon stove that he had wisely purchased, and he busied himself acquiring mining claims. He also tried not to freeze his nuts off, as evidenced by a letter he sent to his family that winter, writing: “The evenings are awfully long here. I put in so many lonesome hours sitting in my cabin in the dim light thinking of home.

Often times I…” and no, Frank did not really say that.

Although, let’s be real, there’s not a whole hell of a lot to do in Alaska during the wintertime, right? I’m sure he spent a little bit of time warming up that snowman of his. But my stupidity aside, what he really wrote in the letter to his wife and daughter was: “If I ever get home I think I will appreciate it and be satisfied to remain there for the rest of my days.

I frankly admit that if I had known the conditions here and the hardships one has to endure I would not have come. If I had a friend who wanted to come I would say decidedly do not come for mining purposes at any rate.”

According to the internet, the average temperature in December there in Rampart varies between three and seven below Fahrenheit. For all of my non-American friends, that’s like minus sixteen to minus twenty-two Celsius. And those are averages.

I believe the low record I saw was fifty below zero. There’s also just three and a half hours of daylight per day in Rampart in the month of December. So yeah, no, Frank was miserable.

You know, when I was younger, I spent a lot of time thinking about Alaska. Read a lot of books about it. Books like “The Final Frontiersman” by Heimo Korth.

I watched a lot of documentaries. I read all about Dick Proenneke. I felt like Alaska was the perfect place for somebody like myself, you know, someone that can’t really fit in.

There’s plenty of land and plenty of solitude. A man can live his life there without somebody breathing down his neck or watching his every move. Free of traffic and pollution and sirens.

But you got to be tough enough to endure the conditions, including the extreme temperatures. And I don’t know what’s happened to me in the last few years, but I just cannot take the cold anymore. I got too much Texas in my bones, I guess.

Plus I love Mexican food too much, and aside from caribou tacos, I don’t think you can get much good Mexican food up in Alaska. So when I finally do make my retreat from society and spend the rest of my days as a hermit recluse, I’m thinking maybe the desert. You know, New Mexico, Arizona, somewhere warm but not as humid as where I currently live, and with the option of driving to a higher altitude if I want to cool my heels.

By the way, that little cabin that Canton spent the winter in there in Rampart would be rented out the following year to none other than Wyatt and Josephine Earp. They too had been on the way to Dawson when the river froze, forcing them to spend the frigid months in Rampart. This, of course, was before Wyatt went on over to Nome and opened up the Dexter Saloon.

As far as Frank goes, he would nearly lose his life that first winter when he and a few other Arctic tenderfeet, affectionately known as cheechakos, tried to make their way overland to a gold strike some twenty-five miles away. It began raining, the rain turned to snow, and suffice it to say, the men never made it to their destination. And when they returned back to Rampart, they were one man short.

According to Frank, it was one of the hardest trips he had ever made in his life, saying that he had never suffered so much with cold and hunger and that it took him a week to get the soreness out of his limbs. Finally, Canton did receive official word that he was now a Deputy US Marshal, and he received his first assignment.

There was a steamboat stuck at the mouth of the Koyukuk River, about one hundred miles south of Rampart, and the passengers disembarked and made a crude tent city known as Suckerville, where they’d spend the winter. A number of these passengers were hard cases, and they soon forced one of the merchants on board to sell them all of his wares at markdown Seattle prices.

Shortly thereafter, a tough named Tom Barkley and his gang just flat out seized the steamboat and claimed the remaining cargo as their own. And what happened next, I think, is what made Frank Canton such an effective lawman. He may not have been the most upright guy as far as morals went.

He might have been too much of a kiss-ass to those in power for my taste, and he may not have been very good at questioning orders or contemplating the hypocritical nature of what he was doing. But the guy just did not seem to know the meaning of the word fear.

Frank arrived in Suckerville alone and boarded the stolen steamboat. The troublemaker Tom Barkley, who everybody else was so scared of, asked Frank who the hell he was, and Frank answered by shucking out his revolver and lining up Barkley and two of his men up against the wall. Said he was Frank Canton, Deputy US Marshal of Alaska, and that he had a strong desire to murder all three men right there on the spot.

The only thing stopping him was the ground being too froze to dig their graves.

As it were, the next morning Canton raised an American flag over the steamboat and declared that the law had arrived in Suckerville. He would stay there for the remainder of the winter, and with the ice breakup, Alaskan tradition made Frank an official sourdough, a badge of honor in those days meaning that you had survived your first harsh winter in the Alaskan interior. Also, sourdough bread was a big staple among Alaskan gold miners, in case you’re wondering where that expression came from.

As we recently saw, when Frank made his way to the gold diggings, he took an all-water route from Seattle to St. Michael and then eastward via the Yukon River. A lot of other people, however, would choose the Skagway route, especially during the Klondike Rush.

That would take them through parts of Canada’s British Columbia and the Yukon District, and as they did so, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would refuse to let anybody cross into Alaska unless they had a year’s worth of provisions to live off of.

If they saw that you had a fifty-pound sack of flour and a sourdough pot, boom, you were all good. That was considered ample enough food. I’m no baker, but I guess the idea is that you can make sourdough bread with just flour, water, and a starter, and it did not require eggs or milk.

Now believe it or not, at this point in time, Frank Canton was the only federal lawman in all of the interior of Alaska, and as such, he stayed pretty busy that summer. He would escort about a million dollars worth of gold down the Yukon River for the N. A.

T. & T. , and he was also sworn in as a deputy for the town of Circle, Alaska, about one hundred or so miles south of Fort Yukon.

And somewhere along the line, Canton became a Mason. I think probably this happened either in Wyoming or Oklahoma, but he would preside over a couple of Masonic funerals up there in Alaska. And that’s just one conspiracy that has never really piqued my curiosity, the Masons.

I just sort of see them as a fraternal order of dudes, you know, just dudes hanging out, totally not doing gay stuff. But do they control the world? I doubt it, especially judging by the Masons I’ve known.

Now Frank may have been the only law dog in the territory, and he may have been engaged in what he called a quote-unquote man’s job, but he did have some help. Often times deputizing others, hiring native guides, and working closely with the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police. He had adapted well to Alaska and would often travel several hundred miles by dog sled through extremely dangerous territory, arrest warrants in hand, and return with his quarry.

His main problem was the financial one. Just like nowadays, the price of goods up in Alaska had a ridiculous markup, and Frank struggled with even being able to feed or board his prisoners. Even hiring guards proved to be nearly impossible with Canton’s meager allowance.

As such, there was many a time when Frank would have to go into his own pocket or even take out loans just to perform his job as a deputy in an adequate manner.

And it all came crashing down in 1899 when, according to Frank, he contracted snow blindness in his second winter and had to return to the lower forty-eight for treatment, a set of circumstances that prompted Canton to resign from his position of Deputy Marshal. While Frank did indeed suffer from his eyes being overexposed to the bright sun reflecting off the snow, the truth is that his past troubles in Oklahoma had finally caught up with him.

All that missing money, and he got fired. And not only did he get sacked, but he would now be barred from ever again working for the Marshal Service. Now in Frank’s defense, I’m thinking what he did wasn’t as devious as it was made out to be.

Did Frank Canton pad the books? Yes. But this was partly due to necessity.

Take the mileage that he was allowed to charge, for example. Well, that was only based on optimal travel conditions, not actual miles on horseback. Let’s say a deputy had to go many miles out of his way to a swollen river or what have you.

This was mileage he could not get paid for. Telling a few white lies to get compensated was a common practice among Canton and his fellow deputies and something condoned by their immediate supervisors.

At the end of the day, right or wrong, this was a political witch hunt by an overzealous Attorney General working for that new administration, and Frank was the one who ended up paying the price. Now in Canton’s absence, his wife and daughter had been staying with friends up in Buffalo, Wyoming, where they were treated with kindness and respect.

Although the citizens of Johnson County still maintained a hatred for Frank Canton, his family was off limits, civilians if you will. Plus, Frank’s brother-in-law was a highly respected saddle maker in the area. But Canton, well, let’s just say time healed zero wounds as far as Frank and the populace of Johnson County, Wyoming, were concerned.

He still had a lot of enemies in the area.

And when word began circulating that Frank was returning to fetch his family, they began making moves to even up the score. Remember John Tisdell, the man Canton was accused of dry-gulching all them years prior? Well, John had him a little boy before he was killed, named Martin.

And that little boy was now twelve years old. Not quite a man, but certainly big enough to hold a revolver and work a trigger.

And he was holding one, fully loaded, on the day Frank arrived in Buffalo. Young Martin was to gun Canton down as soon as he stepped off the stagecoach, and just in case something went wrong, there were two armed men hiding in the shadows ready to finish the job if need be. Would they be successful?

Was this the end of the line for Frank Canton? And if not, what the hell was he going to do if he could no longer work as a Deputy US Marshal? How’s a manhunter earn a living without a badge?

In the early morning hours of June 2, 1899, five masked men held up a Union Pacific train near Wilcox, Wyoming, in what would become one of the more famous robberies of the Old West. The bandits used dynamite to blast their way into a mail car, and after another detonation took care of the safe, they would ride away with an estimated fifty thousand dollars, nearly two million in today’s money.

And if this sounds familiar, well, maybe you’ve seen a little film called “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Contrary to what’s portrayed in the movie, there’s a very good chance that Butch Cassidy himself had nothing to do with this particular holdup. Be that as it may, it’s next to certain that those who did were members of his gang, the Wild Bunch.

Harry Longabaugh, AKA the Sundance Kid, was likely one of the masked men. So was the deadly Harvey Logan and his brother Lonnie, the Tall Texan Ben Kilpatrick, and last but certainly not least was a land pirate by the name of George “Flatnose” Curry. As per the gang’s MO, they utilized horse relays set up along their escape route, and upon divvying up the loot, they broke up into smaller bunches, careful to was their tail as they disappeared into the back country.

Sadly, a sheriff at Converse County would lose his life when he and his posse got a little too close to the desperados near a place that I’m sure you’ve heard of, a location even more famous than the Wild Bunch in name at least: Teapot Dome. Of course, that 𝒔𝒄𝒂𝓃𝒹𝒶𝓁 hadn’t occurred just yet, and at the time, the Dome or Teapot Rock was just a craggy landmark in present-day Natrona County, Wyoming, which just so happens to border Johnson County.

The bandits were headed for a remote pass in the Bighorn Mountains they called Hole-in-the-Wall, sort of an outlaw stronghold they used at times as a headquarters of sorts. And the Hole-in-the-Wall was located in Johnson County. The same Johnson County we’ve been discussing in damn near this entire series.

Now the Wild Bunch did not exist when Frank Canton was sheriff thereabouts. Of course, back then, the worst crime that old Butch Cassidy had ever committed was still in that pair of jeans and a slice of pie. By the time the Wild Bunch came into being, Frank had already moved on.

And when them old boys robbed that train in Wilcox, Canton was still up in Alaska fighting to keep his job and his eyesight.

But he’d soon be returning, and after a bit of comeuppance damn near a decade in the making, a little bit of Johnson County justice if you will, Frank would saddle up and go on the hunt for the Wild Bunch. At least what was left of him.

By the time Frank Canton made his somewhat disgraced journey home from Alaska, it had been over two years since he had seen his wife and daughter. He’d travel via train all the way to Sheridan, Wyoming, where he then switched to a stagecoach for the last leg of his journey, some forty miles south to Buffalo. For what I’m sure he envisioned would be an emotional reunion.

Imagine his surprise when stepping off the train in Sheridan, he spied his wife. She was expecting him, but so was everybody else, even those who wished to do Frank harm. Annie had heard the rumors and came to warn her beloved that trouble was waiting down the line, namely in the form of the vengeful twelve-year-old Martin Tisdell.

As such, Canton took precautions. Once the stage approached the outskirts of Buffalo, he disembarked and slipped in on foot, unseen. Turns out young Martin was employed on a horse ranch by a couple of Canton’s old enemies, Tom Gardner and Lou Webb.

And for as long as the kid could remember, this pair reminded him damn near on a daily basis that Frank Canton was the one who murdered his daddy.

And when word drifted down that Frank was returning to Buffalo, it was Gardner and Webb who gave Martin that revolver and instructed him that the time for retribution had arrived. Luckily, Canton was able to avoid gunplay on this particular occasion, likely saving a twelve-year-old’s life in the process. As such, Martin would live another fifty-three years, passing away in 1952 at the age of sixty-five, and with one hell of a story.

So disaster averted, right? Well, unfortunately, Frank wasn’t able to stay out of trouble for long. The citizens of Johnson County still hated the man.

He was effectively surrounded by enemies, and it was only a matter of time before somebody made a move. A tense situation exacerbated by Frank taking to the bottle.

He stopped in at The Occidental bar there in Buffalo and was already pretty deep in his cups when an old foe by the name of Will Foster made an entrance. Now Foster was long ago blacklisted by the association, and he really irked Canton when, while Frank was under military arrest, Foster rode around on the lawman’s prized horse, Fred. Fun little joke at Frank’s expense, right?

Well, maybe not. You see, Will Foster wasn’t a comical sort of man. Matter of fact, he was remembered by at least one resident of Johnson County as never seeming to laugh and always being on the alert, that even those who approached his camp at night would find him wide awake.

No, I think the horse riding stunt was the pure insult that Frank obviously took it for, and he never forgot.

He would initially offer to buy Foster a drink, though, a gesture that Will immediately refused, saying he would not drink with Canton. Now I don’t know much, but I’ve spent enough time in bars and beer joints to know that when you turn away an aggressive drunk’s offer of a drink, they will invariably get fighting mad.

And sure enough, Frank immediately begins talking, bragged about how he attacked Foster on two separate occasions with the intent of killing him. Will acknowledged as much, saying, “You poisoned my dog, but you never got to me.” To which Frank replied, “No I didn’t, but I’m going to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 you now.”

And then he went for his pistol.

Now more than one source I found stated that Frank Canton was pretty fast on the draw. Be that as it may, Will Foster was faster. At least he was on this day.

He jerked his revolver before Frank cleared leather, but instead of pulling that trigger, he whacked Frank upside the head with it. So hard, in fact, that the gun went flying out of his hand.

Canton, ignoring his own holstered pistol, quickly bent down to retrieve Will’s, but once again Foster was too fast. He snatched the gun off of the saloon floor before Frank could get to it and then commenced to beat the absolute breaks off of Frank Canton. Over and over, Will Foster smashed that six-shooter down onto Canton’s head, so many times and with such rage that witnesses felt like he was killing the ex-lawman.

He didn’t, but by the time this lesson in manners was over, Frank would need over sixty stitches. They say sometime after, once Canton was recuperated enough that he could walk on his own accord, he and Foster had themselves another round of sorts. Frank noticed Will walking across the street, so he stepped outside and onto the Buffalo thoroughfare to meet him.

As the nervous townsfolk watched, Foster continued approaching, headed straight for Frank, not slowing or altering his gait one bit. As Canton stood there waiting, eyes fixed, and then Will Foster just walked right on past Canton. The two men were within touching distance, but Foster didn’t so much as turn his head, alter his pace, nothing.

It was as if Frank did not exist.

Canton stood there a bit dumbfounded, watching Foster walk away before returning back inside. And that was that. Now I don’t know precisely when this beatdown occurred, but Frank arrived in Buffalo in October of 1899, four months after that Wilcox train robbery, and he wouldn’t begin his manhunt until January of 1900.

Other than convalescing, Canton used this time to correspond both with the Pinkertons and the Union Pacific, hoping to get one of the two to fund his expedition in search of the Wild Bunch. They declined. So Frank turned to his older brother down in Texas, John Wesley Horner.

Now at this time, each one of those responsible for the train robbery had a thirty-three thousand dollar bounty on their head, dead or alive, which is over a hundred thousand in today’s money. That said, by the time Frank started looking, the only remaining member of the Wild Bunch still in the area was Flatnose George Curry. So it is he that Canton would focus on.

Both Frank and John Wesley set off in pursuit, chasing leads all over Northern Wyoming and Montana before finally calling it quits in April when news spread of Curry being killed down in Utah. Another failed venture. Keep in mind that this entire time, the only source of income for the Canton family was Frank’s wife Annie.

She was running a little diner there in Buffalo and had been ever since Frank was in Alaska.

And she and young Ruby were doing great socially. At least they were fully accepted in town, well-liked despite their association with Canton. It was just Frank that the people could not stand.

And considering what went down during the Johnson County War, you can’t really blame them.

By the way, Frank would once more be accused of murder there in Johnson County. Back during the hostilities, there was an old boy known as Arapaho Brown, on account that he liked to run around with Arapaho gals, who was a leader among the so-called rustlers. He was one of the top guys in charge of the siege against the invaders before the Army came in and put an end to all the fun.

Well, on January 22, 1901, someone went and murdered Mr. Brown, killed him and then threw his body on the woodpile before torching it. Suspicion immediately fell on Canton, but he had a stone-cold alibi.

Not only was he not in Wyoming on that date, but Arapaho’s killers were ultimately apprehended and, following a confession, sentenced to life in prison.

So where was Frank in late January of ’01? Houston, vampires, that’s where. He was killing vampires when and where he could find them.

Little vampires, big vampires, blind vampires, albino vampires. Frank didn’t give a if you were a vampire, he would find you and he would 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 you. No, uh, sorry, another inside joke from the first couple installments in this series.

Now Frank was back in Oklahoma, desperately trying to get his name cleared so he could once again pin on the badge of a Deputy US Marshal. Law enforcement was in Canton’s blood at this point. It’s what he had been doing in some fashion for the past twenty years.

It’s all he knew. So I reckon it’s only natural that he would continue to pursue this line of work.

But despite even going so far as contacting the US Attorney General under President Roosevelt, Frank was out of luck as far as the federal commission was concerned. He instead settled temporarily for a job as a deputy under the new sheriff of Pawnee County, John Crossan, at least until the land lottery of 1901 and the creation of Comanche County.

One of Frank’s old buddies, Bill Painter, was elected sheriff of the new county over there in Southwestern Oklahoma, and Canton went to work for him as a deputy. Now the county seat in Comanche was and is Lawton, a boom town of sorts whose population exploded to over ten thousand in just one week. Not a mining town like in the old days, this boom was overland.

But still, you had your usual types, you know, the gamblers and conmen and all that. It may have been the year of Our Lord 1901, but things were still a little wild in Lawton, Oklahoma. Hell, their courthouse when Frank arrived was just a covered wagon in the town square.

This also doubled as the jail, with them chaining prisoners to the wagon wheels.

Story goes that one rather large prisoner simply walked off, only to be recaptured sometime later miles away, still carrying a heavy wheel. Interestingly enough, Canton’s old foe from the Doolin Gang days, Heck Thomas, was one of his co-workers during this period, serving not only as a fellow Comanche County deputy but also chief of police for Lawton and Deputy US Marshal.

One can only assume that Frank was jealous, but there’s no record of any sort of altercations. Truth be told, where Sheriff Painter and many of his deputies were accused of shaking down prisoners for money, Canton was specifically singled out as being one of the few honest ones.

Of course, that didn’t stop him from doing a bit of election tampering. He would use his friendship with Burk Burnett to get a meeting with Comanche leader Quanah Parker and coerce him to keep his people from voting in a certain upcoming election. He also, during the same election, posted himself outside of a voting location in Cache, Oklahoma, and proclaimed that every black man who attempted to cast a ballot would be put in irons.

And this is really where me and Frank Canton just don’t see eye to eye. Blatant racial discrimination aside, I mean, I guess that was to be expected in those days. It’s just the 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 of power that stands out to me.

This wasn’t the first time, and it certainly would not be the last. We’ll talk more about it coming up, but Frank never hesitated to use his badge for his own purposes.

In June of 1903, Frank would be hired as a stock inspector for the Cattle Raisers Association of Texas, thanks in large part to the aforementioned old friend Burk Burnett. His AO would be the Osage Nation, meaning he’d be working back in the Pawnee area, and the work he was doing was a lot like what he did as an inspector back in Wyoming. His job was to investigate, apprehend, and help convict cattle thieves.

And that’s exactly what he did. “Members of the Texas Cattle Raisers Association have reason to feel proud of Frank Canton,” wrote the Pawnee Times-Democrat after Frank broke up a cattle theft ring led by outlaw Tom Jordan. Success notwithstanding, Frank still had his mind set on a federal job.

He cozied up to the new Oklahoma governor, former Rough Rider Frank Frantz, say that three times fast, and even had Burk Burnett put the worm in Teddy Roosevelt’s ear as far as him getting a commission.

Hell, Canton was even able to get the attorney that previously prosecuted him, T. A. Taylor, to say that he harbored no ill will and that Canton may have quote-unquote reformed.

In the end, Oklahoma Marshal Jack Abernathy would swear Frank in as a Deputy US Marshal once more in late 1906, a position that some think was granted for the sole purpose of having Canton track down the assassin Jim Miller, also known as Deacon Jim Miller.

This would not happen, as word quickly came down from the Attorney General’s office all the way in DC that no, Frank Canton could not be a dadgum federal deputy, and that was that. The end. Stop asking.

Still, though, Frank did not allow himself to get too discouraged.

And once more, politics would play a large role in his life, this time in a positive manner. Oklahoma would officially join the Union in 1907, becoming the forty-sixth state, and this meant there would be an elected governor as opposed to the one presidentially appointed. One of the men running was Democrat Charles N.

Haskell, and as fate would have it, Haskell’s campaign manager was the son of the fellow that Frank worked for back when he was an unofficial orderly for the Army in 1865.

This was Frank’s ticket to the big leagues, and it weren’t long before he not only ingratiated himself to the campaign but also became Charles Haskell’s self-appointed bodyguard. Haskell would go on to win the election, and in his official capacity as governor, surprised everybody, Frank included, by appointing Canton to the office of Oklahoma’s Adjutant General.

Now if you’re not familiar with this title, the easiest way I can explain is that the Adjutant General is the top military commander over a particular state’s National Guard. In Oklahoma, they are appointed by the governor and serve at the governor’s pleasure with no set term limits. But I’ll let Frank explain in his own words.

“The Adjutant General was recognized by the War Department as head of the military department of the state with the rank of Brigadier General and subservient to the governor only. Of course, the governor was commander-in-chief, but his duties as chief executive were so numerous that he had no time to give to the military department. The Adjutant General was also president of the Examining Board for the commission and promotion of all officers and was held responsible by the War Department and by the governor of the state for the efficiency of the entire military department of the state.

Under military law the Adjutant General was also ex officio quartermaster general, paymaster general, surgeon general, and chief of ordnance.”

Normally, at least nowadays, this is a position held by top military commanders. Case in point, the current Adjutant General of Oklahoma, Brigadier General Thomas Mancino, dude’s been in uniform for over three decades and has three combat deployments under his belt. Here in my home state of Texas, the Adjutant General is a Major General, Thomas Suelzer.

Just like General Mancino, Suelzer has decades of experience, first with the Air Force and then with the Texas Air National Guard. You get the picture, right?

And then you got General Frank Canton, a man who had never served one solitary day in uniform, at least not until he received his Adjutant General’s uniform. Prior to this, the most Canton had ever commanded was a posse of deputies. And as one writer put it, Frank’s past military experience was limited to shooting soldiers down in Jacksboro, Texas.

Nonetheless, credit where credit’s due, Frank did certainly look the part. I haven’t really covered Canton’s physical description as of yet during this series, but he was not a large man. Per his prison records, Frank was five-foot-one and just one hundred thirty-eight pounds, at least he was back in 1877.

And judging by pictures, he was about the same weight in 1907. Not an ounce of visible fat on the man.

Fit his uniform like he was born to it, had a perfectly trimmed mustache, and sat ramrod straight in the saddle. If you didn’t know any better, by looking at him, you would think he was a lifer. One newspaper out of Guthrie, Oklahoma, described Canton at this time as about six feet tall, slender, and made mostly of sand.

Lack of military experience notwithstanding, Frank proved to be more than competent as far as whipping the Oklahoma National Guard into shape was concerned. Before his appointment, they did not meet the minimum standards of efficiency as outlined by the War Department. Thus, they were not eligible to receive federal funds or equipment.

And hell, during this period, all the Oklahoma Guard consisted of was a skeleton crew of an infantry regiment consisting of just six hundred men.

Frank would almost double this number and make sure that they had the support of a hospital and Signal Corps. Ordered twice-monthly drills in addition to an annual ten-day muster. He also petitioned for a law that penalized employers who refused to allow a guardsman to attend training.

By the way, I’ll never not get a kick out of the fact that we changed the name of the War Department to the Department of Defense.

Anyway, taking a page from his formative years in Texas, Canton also tried to form a sort of Oklahoma version of the Texas Rangers, a state police department answering only to him as the Adjutant General. This was ultimately voted down, but as you’ll see, this would not stop Frank’s future boss from using the Guard as such.

In 1908, Canton took the Oklahoma Guard’s rifle team to Camp Perry, Ohio, for the national sharpshooting competition. Not sure how they did, but their commander, General Canton, won first place in the pistol match, hitting bullseyes with every shot at twenty-five yards and doing so well at the fifty- and seventy-five-yard targets that he figuratively blew his competition away.

It was in that same year that Frank committed what the amazingly talented artist and Western film aficionado David Lambert considers to be his greatest crime. He starred in Al Jennings’ silent film “The Bank Robbery” alongside hated foes Bill Tilghman and Heck Thomas. Also featured in the movie, other than Jennings, was Quanah Parker.

Now I do think this movie is kind of cool, if for no other reason than you get to see Quanah Parker in motion riding a horse. Horrible quality, of course, I mean, it’s from 1908, but it is on YouTube if you’re interested. Link down in the show notes.

I think Quanah comes in at the twenty-one-minute mark.

The following year, Frank got the chance to test the Guard’s mettle in a real-world conflict when they were called to put an end to the Crazy Snake Rebellion, AKA the Smoked Meat Rebellion, which sounds delicious. Not really going to go into this particular fracas here on this episode, as I do plan on covering it in more detail in the future. But sure enough, the Oklahoma Guard was sent in, initially without Canton’s say-so, a sore spot we’ll touch on in just a moment, and they did restore order.

So so far so good, right? Frank Canton finally had a position of high authority, a fancy title, and he seemed to be thriving in the position. Unfortunately, he still enjoyed a drink on occasion, and you know how Frank got when he took to the bottle.

One spree in particular damn near cost the man his job.

Okay, so the Oklahoma Guard had themselves a band, and oftentimes they would play for various functions, many of them non-military in fashion, and oftentimes in uniform. Nobody minded, as this not only gave them a little bit of free PR but also a chance to earn some money on the side. Cool.

But when the band performed at an event for one of Canton’s political enemies, Oklahoma Republican Bird McGuire, Frank, more than a little under the influence, decided that he would no longer allow his musicians to play for political functions. The band leader ignored this order, and they went ahead and performed anyway, just out of uniform and on borrowed instruments.

Governor Haskell, Frank’s boss, became aware of this 𝒹𝓇𝒶𝓂𝒶 and, once again going over Canton’s head, sent word to Congressman McGuire saying that he was happy to have the band play, and furthermore, they should do so in uniform. And once Frank Canton got wind of this, he flew into a drunken rage, storming into the Royal Hotel where Governor Haskell was staying and confronting the man publicly.

“You cannot countermand my orders, and by God sir, if you do you will pay for it,” Frank hollered before he, per one eyewitness, quote, “proceeded to tell Haskell some truths that his ear had long deserved, told them too in language much more forcible than eloquent.” End quote.

And if that’s not enough, as the owner of the hotel and a few bystanders rushed in to separate the two guys, one of them pulled a loaded revolver out of Frank’s pocket. Not a big deal, as he usually went armed, but the rumor mill picked up on this, and word soon spread that not only did Canton drunkenly threaten the governor, but he also pulled a gun on him, which he didn’t. But you know how gossip be.

Believe it or not, by the time the two would meet again later on the following day, their tempers had cooled and they kissed and made up. Frank would put in a letter of resignation, expecting to be fired, but the governor did not accept it. His term as Oklahoma’s commander-in-chief was soon coming to an end, and he wasn’t planning on running for reelection, so he figured he’d go ahead and let Frank serve out the remainder of his time as Adjutant General, thinking that with the new governor would come a replacement for Canton as well.

This would not be the case. There was a new governor, Lee Cruce, but when he took office in January of 1911, he chose to keep Frank on. And boy oh boy, what a team they made.

The sanctimonious Kentucky-born Cruce, an attorney and banker before getting involved in politics, was a very strong proponent of both blue laws and prohibition.

Blue laws, by the way, are laws banning or restricting certain activities on specified days, usually Sundays. Here in the United States, they still exist, just on a much smaller scale. Take present-day Oklahoma, for example, where car dealerships are closed on Sundays.

Because you ought not be out there buying a car on the Lord’s day. That’s a blue law. You also can’t buy liquor on Sundays.

That’s another blue law.

I guess it’s okay to get drunker than Cooter Brown the other six days of the week, but you better either stock up on the night before or go sober come church time. And if I’m not mistaken, there are still states to this very day that have blue laws against hunting and fishing on the Sabbath.

You know, I don’t talk much about my own personal politics on this podcast. Truth is, I don’t align with any political party. My own personal philosophy can best be summed up with the phrase “I just want to be left alone.”

I know laws are important, and you must have rules in a civilized society. I’m all for it. But I also believe in a truly free society.

I should be allowed to do whatever I want so long as I’m not hurting somebody else. And yeah, that includes buying a car, getting drunk, or shooting a whitetail on a Sunday.

Not Governor Cruce, though. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he for sure would not be a fan of the Wild West Extravaganza. What’s more, he would use Frank Canton and the state guard to enforce and maintain these self-righteous statutes.

No drinking, no gambling, no horse racing, no prize fighting, and by God, no breaking of the Sabbath.

All this was to be strictly adhered to under Cruce, and when he barked, Canton and the Oklahoma Guard would bite. Like on the four separate occasions when Frank and his troops were called in to stop prize fights. Hell, they even put a stop to a damn roping competition in October of 1914.

Pretty much anything that was fun was a big no-no.

So much so that shots were even fired that same year when the citizens of Tulsa, Oklahoma, attempted to sinfully engage in some unsanctioned horse racing. General Canton and the Guard arrived locked and loaded, but one of the race promoters obtained an order issued by an Oklahoma Superior Court judge giving permission for the race to continue.

Canton outright ignored this, stating that he pays no attention to such orders and answers only to Governor Cruce. And despite Canton’s men clearing the stands of spectators, the promoters still went ahead with the race, or at least they tried to. When the first horses broke out of the gates, Frank had the Guard fire a volley over the heads of the jockeys, threatening that if anybody else came out, he would order his men to shoot to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁.

Listen, God doesn’t want you to gamble on horses, all right? It’s bad for you. So is drinking.

Also, bass fishing on Sundays is completely out of the question. Look man, we’re just trying to protect you from yourself. And if we’ve got to murder some of you ers to save you from eternal damnation, well, so be it.

For what it’s worth, Governor Cruce would narrowly avoid impeachment and not seek a second term. His replacement, the much more laid-back Governor Robert Lee Williams, would also keep Frank on as Adjutant General. Or he would, until Congress enacted the National Defense Act of 1916.

Following Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico, this bill gave greater federal control over National Guard units. And Canton, being a bit of an anachronism at this point with zero regular Army experience, no longer fit the bill as commander. As such, Frank was promoted to Major General and then asked for his resignation just nineteen days later.

The Guard would be sent to Texas on its first operation as a unit of the US Army without their former commander.

Frank and his wife Annie then moved to Oklahoma and lived with their daughter Ruby. She had remained unmarried and, after studying music in Chicago, had gone on to become a college librarian. And as nice as it was for her to take care of her parents, Frank still needed a job.

After a short failed venture into the oil industry, Frank would go back to work for the Cattle Raisers Association of Texas and was even made an honorary member for life. An ironic turn of events, considering that he himself was once a blatant rustler of Texas cattle.

Now at this point in his life, Frank was no longer going out in the field and hunting down thieves. His work for the association was more in the support of those who were. He would also begin writing his memoirs by hand, and despite claiming that he wanted to forget the past and not seek any sort of limelight, he would fish around for both a ghostwriter to assist him and a publisher, with hopes of maybe turning his life story into a movie.

And why not? I mean, hell, everybody else was doing it.

Regrettably, this would not work out, at least not in Frank’s lifetime. By 1925, he began deteriorating rather quickly. He was nearly deaf and blind and had already been forced to retire from the Cattle Raisers Association.

He and Annie did still live with Ruby, surviving off of Frank’s small pension.

And in early September of 1927, he would be diagnosed with cancer. Of what type, I don’t know. The family would quietly celebrate Frank’s seventy-eighth birthday on September 15, and then just twelve days later, on the twenty-seventh, he would pass away.

Canton’s body was taken to Oklahoma City, where he lay in state before being buried with full Masonic and military rites, twenty-one-gun salute and all. Per one newspaper editor: “The man who died at Edmond Tuesday was literally born to the role he filled with such success. Canton knew exactly what to do and exactly how to do it.

He thought straight, he saw straight, and hence he was able to shoot straight. He was able to think straight because he knew nothing of the distracting influences of fear. Probably he died without ever knowing what fear really was.

His nerves were as quiet as the finest tempered steel, and for that reason he could think of nothing but his target, see it clearly, and shoot directly into its heart. The states that spread their acres from the Mississippi out towards the sunset owe a mighty debt to Frank Canton and his kind.”

A beautiful eulogy, without a doubt, and I tend to agree that Frank rarely knew the meaning of the word fear. However, not everybody remembered him so fondly. Frank’s memoirs would eventually get printed, sadly a year after Frank’s death.

His daughter Ruby would also pass at just forty-two years of age, leaving poor Annie alone to busy herself, and I’m sure keep her mind off of her grief. She labored over Frank’s manuscripts, eventually getting it published in 1930 under the title “Frontier Trails: The Autobiography of Frank Canton.”

At the time, there was no mention of Frank’s outlaw past, nor any indication that his true name was Joe Horner. Even now, this is only mentioned in the foreword. And yeah, I will leave a link in the show notes in case you’d like to check it out.

Per author Robert K. DeArment, one such copy ended up in the public library up there in Buffalo, Wyoming, where Frank wasn’t so warmly remembered. DeArment writes: “A reader inserted his own critique in penciled marginal notes in the volume.

Passages are underlined with terse comments: ‘Not true,’ ‘Lies,’ ‘False,’ and in block capital letters is the accusation ‘Liar, thief, and murderer.’ Canton had closed his chapter on the Johnson County Cattle War by commenting that he was broken financially by the 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇. The anonymous critic responded: ‘Too bad he didn’t hang.’

A summation is made on the end sheet: ‘This book is a pack of lies. I hope very few people ever read it. I’m sorry I did.'”

And there you go, man. That’s Frank Canton in a nutshell. In a lot of ways, the very manifestation of the Old West itself.

One big, complicated, messy legend. And since I’m already quoting from Robert K. DeArment, and since he’s a much more eloquent man than I, let’s go ahead and close this out with the author’s final paragraph in the book “Alias Frank Canton.”

DeArment writes: “And so in memory as in life, Joel Horner, alias Frank Canton, a hard man in a hard time, remains one of the most controversial figures of the turbulent frontier era. Like the milieu that produced him, his life was complex, often contradictory, but forever fascinating.” And damn, I one hundred percent agree.

Frank was tough, and he was fearless. The man could shoot straight, endure harsh conditions, and was doggedly determined on the trail. And he stood up for what he believed in.

Unfortunately, what he believed in often put him on the wrong side of history, and he had no qualms about abusing his authority.

Frank was a criminal as a younger man. This is an irrefutable fact. He was a thief.

He stole cows and horses all over North Texas. He helped rob a bank, and he held up a stagecoach. All this with the business end of a loaded gun.

He escaped from jail many a time, only to then turn around and relentlessly pursue others, sometimes lethally, who were guilty of far less severe crimes than he. And had the invasion of Johnson County been successful, there’s no telling how many others would have died.

That said, I don’t think Canton was evil. I think he, like all the other so-called heroes of the Old West, was just a flawed, complicated human being. People who knew him in his latter years viewed Frank as the old guard, you know, just one of them.

Unshakable, infallible, brave men of integrity. But those who knew him during the Johnson County War considered him a rank murderer, an assassin. I mean, we still don’t know if it was he who killed Tisdell and Orley Jones.

And viewed through a modern lens, I’m sure many revisionists would probably try to sum up Frank’s life as that of just an oppressive racist. Yet at the same time, he was a devoted family man. Despite his job often causing him to spend long stretches of time away from his loved ones, I found no indication that Frank ran around on Annie or in any way neglected his daughter Ruby.

And he did arrest many, many legitimate criminals, making the frontier a tad bit safer with each conviction.

At the end of the day, I don’t necessarily think Frank Canton was a good guy. I just don’t think he was any worse than other legends that many now look up to. Guys like Wyatt Earp or even Jesse James are lauded as heroes, whereas Frank Canton, a man who in many ways embodied the Old West, is relegated to damn near obscurity.

So what do you think? Was Frank Canton a villain, a hero, or just like me and you, somewhere in between? Was he really a vampire?

Did he ever arrest any lycans? Was the entire Johnson County War just a cover-up for interdimensional creatures vying for control of the underworld? Hit me up and let me know what you think.