Kind of what I was pointing out CD. Reading Wilbarger time after time you read about folks going out berry picking or hunting cows and not even carrying a gun.
While we look at the concentration of Indian raids and say to ourselves we wouldn't go to the outhouse without being armed to the teeth.
One must wonder how dangerous it even was back then. Dodge, Abilene, Hays, Tombstone, Bisbee, Deadwood, El Paso...all supposedly dangerous towns. I've read of people doing statistical studies though and saying they were actually less dangerous than modern day Detroit or LA.
I expect it was pretty much the same back then as it is now. I can't pack a gun all the time, even a small handgun, because it gets in the way if you are doing hard, manual labor. Plus, it gets messed up. I've got both my Grandpa's main rifles...a Winchester 1906 and a Remington model 12. Both .22's show hard use. The former was carried in a hayrack on a baler for use killing jackrabbits back in the 20's and 30's. I don't know what my Grandpa's model 12 was used for in Texas mainly. Probably shooting hogs they were fixin' to butcher. Frontier guns are mainly the same way, hard-used. I can't imagine most laborers carrying one all the time though. The Indians were a hit-and-miss proposition with only those settlers way out probably on constant alert. If anything, Birdwatcher's stories here relate how the Comanch were capable of long-range, tactical type raids. Raids where lesser targets were bypassed in order to get richer, fatter prizes that would normally be alerted if the poorer ones were hit first. The poorest people would generally live the farthest out too. Ironic that they were probably the least able to afford the weapons needed to defend themselves when they were the most apt to really need them. Same as today. Lots of good, po folks live in the ghetto and don't have enough money to get a decent gun. Sterlings, RG's, Phoenix Ravens, old Iver Johnson's...You go up to Kansas City or down to Dallas and some of the best folks are old colored folks that live in the worst areas.
I figure that by the late frontier period, when good Winchesters and Spencers were available, there were still a lot of homesteads out on the edge, that relied on stuff like 1842 US Model Muskets or 1861 Springfields. I owned a Sharps Conversion Carbine. Lots of these guns were evidently given to settlers in Arizona, for defense against Apaches. These aren't a real good gun either, despite the Sharps name. They have poor ejectors and will stick a shell at an inopportune time. I don't think the troops liked them.
Anyway, my guess is that the guys Birdy is talking about were armed with mainly fowling pieces, muskets and poor-boy Tennessee type rifles. Probably the McCullochs and some of the better heeled ones had a brace of military single shot pistols to augment their long guns.
