I first encountered Frank Canton as the chief thug of the rancher side in the Johnson County War. This autobiography is filled with interesting details, and Canton seems to have had an effect on the creation of the cowboy-gunfighter hero of Fiction.
He began life as Joe Horner, and under that name, robbed several banks in Nebraska. But he got away with that, and then, the money having run out, he turned to being the violence wing of the Ranching elite in Wyoming.
After the Johnson County fiasco, he slipped more firmly into the world of law enforcement, and ended as a figure of respectability. His sins never seem to have caught up with him. The book is entertaining.
I read a 1972 reprint. ( )