Go Straight or Go Bad: Frank Canton

 By Andrea Downing

I first came upon the name of Frank Canton some years back when I wrote a piece called ‘A Lynching, an Opera, and a Book’ about the Johnson County War’s lynching of Cattle Kate (https://andreadowning.com/2012/08/31/a-lynching-an-opera-and-a-book/ )  Canton played a key role in that fiasco during his less savory days.  As many men of the time, he acted on both sides of the law, whichever suited him best at the time.  But let’s start at the beginning…

Canton was actually born Josiah Horner in 1849.  Some sources say his birthplace was Indiana, some Virginia, but whatever the case he moved with his family to Texas as a child and in his teens took jobs cowboying. Apparently herding cattle didn’t suit Josiah because by 1871 he was rustling them instead, and bank robbing. In 1874 he is on the record as having killed one Buffalo soldier and wounded another.  Josiah/Frank--who seems to bear a strong resemblance in this photo to Omar Sharif in  the film Doctor Zhivago--was arrested for bank robbery in 1877 in Texas, but escaped and tried to go straight.  It was then he changed his name to Frank Canton and returned to cattle herding…

But not for long.  He was taken on as a stock detective for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, a powerful group who treated Wyoming open range as their own estates, and were trying to push out small landowners and ranchers by accusing them of rustling.  When Canton was elected Sheriff of Johnson County in 1885, he became indispensable to this group, but the position only lasted four years.  Canton left when a foreman of one of the WSGA ranches escaped his custody…but Canton didn’t go very far.  He continued to work partly as a Deputy Marshal and partly as an instrument for the WSGA.  When a homesteader was shot and killed, Canton was arrested, but the big ranchers managed to get him off the hook and Canton skedaddled to Illinois.

It was Canton, however, who led the Texas hired guns in the Johnson County War.  Brought in to kill off the small landowners and ranchers, Canton’s group were responsible for the lynching of  James Averell and Ellen Liddy Watson, known as ‘Cattle Kate.’  Without going into the full story of the Johnson County War here, Canton’s group were surrounded but saved by the cavalry sent in by President Benjamin Harrison.  The newspapers, under the thumb of the WSGA, made out Canton’s group to be the innocents.  Canton took advantage of that and left WY for good.

And that is when he seems to have turned over a new leaf.  He worked in Indian Territory, and served as a Deputy US Marshal.  Making a name for himself as an honest lawmen, he worked with such luminaries of the law enforcement field as Bass Reeves and Bill Tilghman. After a brief hiatus in the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897, Canton returned to the by-now Oklahoma Territory continuing as a lawmen.  When OK became a state in 1907, Canton became adjutant general of the Oklahoma National Guard.  He finally admitted his real name and bad deeds, but the TX Governor granted him a pardon on the basis of his years as a lawman.

By 1925, the aging Canton was forced to retire on grounds of ill health and he and his wife Annie moved in with their unmarried daughter in Edmond, OK.  Canton died of cancer in 1927, just a few days after his 78^thbirthday.

  

(!st photo of Canton, public domain; older Canton from Oklahoma Historical Society)

 

 

The theme of gunslingers and outlaws trying to go straight is a frequent one in literature, and I’m guilty as well of taking up the trope. In Shot Through the Heart,  Gunslinger Shiloh Coltrane has returned home to work the family's Wyoming ranch, only to find there's still violence ahead. His sister and nephew have been murdered, and the killers are at large.
Dr. Sydney Cantrell has come west to start her medical practice, aiming to treat the people of a small town. As she tries to help and heal, she finds disapproval and cruelty the payment in kind.
When the two meet, it's an attraction of opposites. As Shiloh seeks revenge, Sydney seeks to do what's right.                                                                                                                                                      Each wants a new life, but will trouble or love find them first?

 

Here’s an excerpt:

Sydney watched as he rolled out his bedroll where the table had been, now pushed aside. “I’ll get you some fresh water,” she said as she made a move toward the door.

“No. You don’t know who might be lurking out there, who might’ve snuck up. I’ll go.”

Frustrated, she stamped her foot. “You are sooo annoying! You won’t be here tomorrow night, or the night after. I look after myself, Mr. Coltrane! I—”

“I thought we were using first names now.” His hands found his hips and he had that funny smile once more.

She pursed her lips, tried to hold in her anger. “It doesn’t matter what I call you! You are still the most infuriating man I’ve ever met.”

“Met many, then?” He had one brow up and a smirk now.

“I’m a doctor. Of course I’ve ‘met’ many.”

“Dead or alive?”

“Very funny.” She grabbed the dishcloth and flicked it before spreading it out on the handle of the range. “Good night!”

“Good night, Sydney,” he said mildly as she headed for her bedroom and slammed the door.

In the dark, she lay as she did many nights, the moon glowing through her window, a shadow cast of the cross panes, her thoughts simmering in her brain. He had asked why she had become a doctor and her answer had not been the complete truth. She recalled now a dinner party her parents had given when she was sixteen, new acquaintances her father had met at his bank, a professor and his wife. Sydney had formed an instant attachment to them, held the woman in high esteem, admired her greatly for being a doctor, having a profession. And the husband! It had been love at first sight, or what she considered love at her tender age, a ‘crush,’ infatuation of the deepest variety. Not only had he been kind, handsome, and good-natured, unlike the example her own father had set, but he was learned and interesting, fascinating even. She would have walked over freshly fired nails had he asked her. The example they had set stayed with her. She would emulate them, walk the same path as they.

From the front room came the sound of the board creaking as Shiloh turned in his sleep. A very different man from Professor Willis. A man who took things into his own hands, a man of doing, of action rather than study, complacency and thought. There was something here that attracted her as well. There was kindness in Coltrane, but kindness of a different sort, and where the professor had been handsome with his goatee, dark eyes, and studious, respectable demeanor, Shiloh Coltrane had a sort of rough and ready beauty to him, the unkempt appearance and bearing of someone who worked hard to get what he wanted. That, too, was very appealing.

Her loneliness grew on her, was amplified with the knowledge there was a man in the next room whose soft, even breathing she imagined she could hear. Other things she could imagine, too. Sleeping in his arms, his hard body wrapped around her, their legs entwined, the intimacy of shared jokes, little whispers through the soft night. And if she went through that door? If she lay down next to him?

If she could just have the peace of companionship for one night?

Her bed moaned slightly as she shifted her weight to touch her bare feet to the floor; her light nightdress fell about her. Cat-like, she tiptoed and clasped the doorknob, stopped in her tracks, wondered if she knew what she was doing, and why she was doing it? Just a peek, she told herself. Just a glance to let her imagination know better. A kind of yearning and curiosity rolled into one.

Giving in to her own inability to sleep unless she just had this one glimpse of him, she turned the knob and slipped into the front room. The profile of Shiloh bundled in his bedroll, lit by the moon, greeted her. She advanced with care, afraid to wake him, and then heard the metallic clunk as his gun hit the floor. She stood and stared down at him: his hands cradled his head, elbows akimbo, the thin smile upon his lips.

And then he reached out his hand, his palm open, and she let the long fingers wrap around her wrist and guide her down.

 

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