ArizonaRealCountry.com 43 March 2019 By Alan Rockman For some, including a suitably impressed Owen Wister, the Harvard classmate, and friend of Theodore Roosevelt, he was the paragon of virtue, the strong, silent Old West lawman come to save the day for the ranchers from rustlers, thieves, and outlaws, and for city folk the fast-draw keeper of justice and civilization. But for others, including the small landowner or the lone cowboy, he represented something entirely different. A cold-blooded, calculated, hired killer and assassin. PART 1 The “Real” Virginian FRANK CANTON Whoever and whatever the real Frank Canton aka Joe Horner, aka "The Virginian" really was, he certainly was not killed off during the Johnson County War as two contemporary Western movies - 1980's turgid Heaven's Gate where a vengeful Jim Averill, portrayed by Kris Kristofferson, guns down Canton, who is portrayed by the usually good-natured Sam Waterston or in the 2002 movie where a thinly- disguised Canton named Hunt Lawton and portrayed by the aging Burt Reynolds is also shot out of the saddle. No, Frank Canton did not get shot down during the Johnson County War of which he was an integral part of, as a Stock Detective who helped instigate the whole bloody fracas. He went on, despite a very checkered past, to become a very respected U.S. Deputy Marshal in both the Oklahoma territory where he helped bring the Doolin-Daltons to bay and later in Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush. And yes, he made such an impression on the budding novelist Wister that the Eastern writer created his famous "The Virginian" character in great part around the real-life experiences and exploits of Canton. But who was Frank Canton really? And did he actually come from Virginia? To begin with, while he wasn't either the Sam Waterston or Burt Reynolds "Canton" characters so wrongly killed off in their respective movies about the Johnson County War, he certainly wasn't the clean-shaven, virtuous cowboy code abiding Joel McCrea or James Drury "Canton" based characters either. In fact, Frank M. Canton was not only the epitome of many, if not most frontier lawmen in that he came to his profession after a very shady past, but unlike most he was a very complex individual in that his own code in upholding the law might not suit many of the citizens he had sworn to protect, especially when the Johnson County (Range) War broke out. And... he wasn't even born Frank Canton! Frank M. Canton was born Joe Horner, and while there is even some controversy over where he was actually born (most sources claim Virginia, but this writer has seen at least one source that claimed he was born in Indiana) in his own posthumously published autobiography Frontier Trails he claimed: "I was born in Virginia, fifteen miles from the city of Richmond, in 1849" (Canton, Frank M., Frontier Trails: The Autobiography of Frank M. Canton, p.xvi. 1930). There is a murky claim that Canton, as a 13-year-old teenager at the start of the Civil War, served as a valet to a Union Army officer, but this writer has been unable to substantiate this claim, and nothing of the kind was ever mentioned in Canton's autobiography (largely written by ghostwriter Edward Everett Dale). What is known is that Canton, still a teen, moved west to Texas with his parents, and as he grew into post-adolescence promptly became a Cowboy, and under the tutelage of veteran Trail Boss, Burk Burnett embarked on the first of many long trail drives with 1,500 cattle to Abilene Kansas in 1869. The Cowboys moved north on that old familiar trail through wind, rain, quicksand - and ultimately, problems with Osage Indians, who when Burnett refused to give them cattle attacked the camp killing six cattle, then later that evening the same Indians caused a "stampede" that not only caused the cattle to scatter but they also took the majority of the Cowboys' horses. This forced most of them to herd on foot through rattlesnake country and prairie dog holes for the last, most arduous part of the journey. As Canton would later recall, "then commenced the hardest trip of my life" (Canton, Frontier Trails, page 9). But in the end Canton, Burnett, and the rest of the Cowboys managed to get the majority of cattle all the way to Abilene and remarkably in good shape too. He would subsequently join other cattle outfits, including one owned by the famed Snyder brothers, in drives further north to Nebraska. Canton would make several more cattle drives as a working Cowboy, but upon returning to Texas in 1870, Canton, despite assertions in his autobiography of assisting the Texas Rangers in bringing to trial the Kiowa Chiefs Santana and Big Tree in the wake of the Red River war promptly got into trouble. His first brushes with the law was atypical of many a young Texan in those first Reconstruction years in the Lone Star State. In 1871 he started robbing banks and rustling cattle. Then in 1874 came a more serious offense. While drinking in a saloon in Jacksboro, Texas on October 10, 1874, Canton encountered some "Buffalo Soldiers" making disparaging remarks about white women. Incensed, Canton demanded an apology from the black cavalrymen and when none was forthcoming, gunfire erupted with at least one of the cavalrymen killed and another seriously wounded. Canton was able to get clear and escape justice this time, but his luck would run out 3 years later when he robbed the bank in Comanche, Texas. Captured and jailed, Canton would escape and returned to participating on cattle drives for a brief time. Of course, he never mentioned these troublesome incidents in the autobiography he would later write, stating: "It is needless for me to state that what I shall write in this life story will be the plain, uncolored truth. It will contain no fiction." (Canton, Frontier Trails, p.xv) Maybe so, but there were plenty of omissions, and as we shall see even when the truth was written it was colored with embellishments and with Canton's own biases. After leading one last cattle drive of 2500 steers up to Ogallala, Nebraska in 1878, Canton suddenly moved north to Montana, vowed to change his ways, and officially changed his name from Joe Horner to Frank Canton. While residing in Montana Canton accepted a position as a field inspector with the Wyoming Stock Raisers (Growers) Association at a time when rustling on the Open Range had increased dramatically. To reinforce his lawman credentials, he was also made a deputy sheriff in Custer County, Montana. As Canton would write, "My duties were to take charge of the criminal work on the range, protect the interests of members of the Association, recover stolen property, and furnish evidence against stock thieves." (Canton, Frontier Trails, p. 28) Moving two years later to Buffalo, Wyoming, Canton settled down building a ranch, married, then ran for and won the office of Sheriff of Johnson County in 1882. Canton was very popular at the beginning of his tenure as Sheriff, winning support not just from the big rancher conglomerates but he was also quite popular with the lone Cowboys, the homesteaders (also known as "Honyockers"). He would easily win re-election, but by the time he left office in 1886 two momentous events would forever alter and blemish what up until then was a relatively stellar career. The first was the great "Die-Up." The second being his decision to openly side with big ranching interests instead of being for all of the people who elected him. There is no need for a retell of the terrible blizzard of 1886-1887, that "Die-Up" and its effect on the Wyoming Cattle Industry except to briefly mention how it heralded the end of the Open Range. Both the big ranching conglomerates and the lone Cowboys realized that the days of the "Open Range" were at an end, and they had become desperate men. The big ranching conglomerates desperate to round up all of their surviving stock and keep them penned in where they could house and feed continued on page 44