35. Preparing for Payback
Old Mose Beaman wasted no time preparing Frank Eaton to exact payback for his father’s murder. He gave the then-eight-year-old Frank an old Navy Colt Revolver, and began teaching him how to handle a gun. The kid took to it like a duck to water, and before long, he could shoot the heads off rattlesnakes with either hand, simply by “point firing”.
At age fifteen, Frank headed to Fort Gibson, a US Army cavalry fort in Oklahoma, to learn more about firearms. He was too young to enlist but got some odd jobs around the fort. He reportedly competed with the fort’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. So he headed there to get started on his payback.