I watched the bits and pieces I could find on Youtube.
I’m wondering how often guys on horseback actually charged each other with handguns blazing. OK, the Civil War, but those were military actions.
Texas Ranger Captain RIP Ford, who would know, opined that a guy on horseback with a revolver was at best evenly matched against a mounted Comanche with a bow. Surely the same thing applies to two guys with revolvers.
“Even” doesn’t sound like very good odds if one is going to repeat the practice. If ya don’t get shot there’s still the prospect of have your horse shot, which could likewise prove fatal.
This might be why Captain Ford did almost all of his plains fighting with rifles, you got within range, dismounted and used a rifle. It’s been a while since I read it but IIRC even Walter Prescott Web in his classic 1935 work “The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense” mentions only one running fight on the plains, and that was settled by a Ranger who dismounted and used his Winchester.
Agreed Mike. Nearly all the Ranger accounts I’ve read said they dismounted and used their rifles in most actions against the Comanche.
The only one I recall that was supposedly settled with a pistol, was when Rip Ford was stranded on Enchanted Rock and outnumbered.
He was said to have been the first to use a Colt Patterson Revolver to sort it out.
