Frank Boardman "Pistol Pete" Eaton (October 26, 1860 – April 8, 1958) was a scout, sheriff, and cowboy. Early life Eaton was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, and at the age of eight, he moved with his family to Twin Mound, Kansas. When Eaton was eight years old, his father, an abolitionist, was shot in cold blood by six former Confederates, who during the war had served with the Quantrill Raiders. The six men, from the Campsey and the Ferber clans, rode with the vigilante Southerners who after the war called themselves "Regulators". In 1868, Mose Beaman, his father's friend, said to Frank, "My boy, may an old man's curse rest upon you, if you do not try to avenge your father". That same year, Mose taught him to handle a gun. Adult life At the age of fifteen, before setting off to avenge his father's death, Eaton said he visited Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, a cavalry fort, to learn more about how to handle a gun. Although too young to join the army, he outshot everyone at the fort and competed with the cavalry's best marksmen, beating them every time. Eaton claimed that after many competitions, the fort's commanding officer, Colonel John Joseph Coppinger, gave Frank a marksmanship badge and a new nickname, "Pistol Pete". Like many of his tales, this may not be completely factual. During his teen years, Eaton wrote that he was faster on the draw than Buffalo Bill. From his first days as a lawman, he was said to "pack the fastest guns in the Indian Territory". By the end of his career, Eaton would allegedly have eleven notches on his gun. Eaton was said to have been given a cross by a girlfriend, which he wore around his neck and which saved his life when it deflected a bullet during a gunfight. He would write later that, "I’d rather have the prayers of a good woman in a fight than half a dozen hot guns: she’s talking to Headquarters". Eaton claimed to serve as a U.S. Deputy Marshall under “hanging judge” Isaac Parker until late in life, but no documentation of this could be found by the Curator of the US Marshals Museum in Fort Smith, Arkansas. At twenty-nine, he joined the land rush to Oklahoma Territory. He settled southwest of Perkins, Oklahoma where he served as sheriff and later became a blacksmith. He