Frank Canton didn't start out as a lawman, he was quiet the opposite. In 1871, he started robbing banks and rustling cattle. On Oct. 10, 1874, he got into a gunfight with some black cavalrymen at Jacksboro, Texas. He killed one soldier and wounded another. in 1877 he was jailed for robbing the bank at Comanche, Texas. He escaped from jail and return to herding cattle. He took a herd up to Ogallala, Neb.., where he officially changed his name to Frank Canton, and vowed to give up his outlaw ways.

He hired on as detective for the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association, a group of powerful cattlemen intent on driving out the small ranchers and farmers who settled in Johnson County. He ran his own ranch near Buffalo, Wyo., and was later elected sheriff of Johnson County.

Canton married in 1885, and had two daughters, one of which died in early childhood. He resigned his office of sheriff and went back to his old job with the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association. At the same time he was made a US deputy marshal. However, he clearly worked for the big cattlemen, and enforced the law as they wished.

Canton joined Frank Wolcott's regulators, a group of more than fifty gunmen hired by the cattlemen to clean the settlers out in Johnson County. On April 9, 1892, Wolcott and Canton led the army of gunmen toward Buffalo, were they heard that Nate Champion and a fellow gunman, Nick Ray, were holed up at the nearby K. C. ranch. Once at the ranch the Regulator's took a wagon and set afire then sent it crashing into the log cabin in which the men were holed up in. As the building was burning, Champion dove out the front door, his clothes a smoking and his guns a blazing. However, fifty guns were zeroed in on him and he was cut down in a instance.

The killing of Champion was to much for Canton, in the months that followed his nerves would come apart. He would have violent nightmares, awake screaming from the a deep sleep . He started seeing the ghost of the dead. So he quit the cattlemen and left Wyoming for Oklahoma.

In Oklahoma, Canton served as a deputy marshal for Judge Isaac Parker, and quickly made a name for himself as a lawman that would stand up to any outlaw. In 1895, canton joined a posse that tracked down the outlaws Bill and John Shelley, who had escaped from the Pawnee, O.T. jail and barricaded themselves in a cabin on the Arkansas River. The posse fired more than 800 shots into the cabin in a five hour gun battle, but was unable to dislodge the outlaws. Then Canton found a wagon and set it on fire and sent it crashing into the cabin. The outlaws quickly came out of the burning structure and were promptly arrested and taken to Fort Smith.

On Nov. 6, 1896, Bill Dunn, an outlaw wanted by Canton, confronted Canton in Pawnee, O.T. and yelled "Damn you Canton, I've got it in for you." As Dunn went for his gun, the lighting fast canton pulled his six-gun from his holster and fired one shot that struck Dunn dead center in the middle of the forehead. The outlaw fell backwards, drawing his six-gun as he fell but died before he could get a shot off.

Canton left his family in 1897 and accepted an appointment as U.S deputy marshal in Alaska where he underwent many harrowing adventures. Canton reportedly tamed the entire lawless town of Dawson and befriended the writer Rex Beach and was used by beach as the role model for many of the frontier heroes he portrayed in his novels. Canton barely survived the harsh Alaskan winter of 1898, he returned to Oklahoma and once more became a lawman.

In 1907, Canton became the adjutant general of the Oklahoma National Guard and held that position until his death in 1927.