8. Frank Eaton Earns a Famous Nickname
Old Mose Beaman did not waste any time before he proceeded to prepare young Frank Eaton to avenge his father’s murder. He gave the then-eight-year-old Frank an old Navy Colt Revolver and began to teach him the ins and outs and finer points of how to handle a gun. The kid took to it like a duck to water, and before long, he demonstrated that he could shoot the heads off rattlesnakes with either hand, simply by “point firing”. When he turned fifteen, Frank headed to Fort Gibson, a US Army cavalry fort in Oklahoma, to learn more about firearms.
He was too young to enlist in the Army, but nonetheless managed to earn some money with odd jobs around the fort. He reportedly competed with the military installation’s best marksmen and outshot them all. That prompted their commander to bestow upon young Frank the nickname “Pistol Pete“. Soon thereafter, Pistol Pete learned that two of his father’s killers, Doc Ferber and Shannon Campsey, were living in a cabin near Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, in the Cherokee Nation. So he headed there to get started on the settlement of accounts.
