Rachel's 1848 Colt Dragoon: A Hand Cannon on Horseback

In West of Forgotten, Rachel carried an 1848 Colt Dragoon. It was a heavy piece, weighing over four pounds, and a cavalryman was expected to aim it with one hand from the back of a galloping horse.

The Colt Dragoon was Samuel Colt's answer to a hard problem. His giant Walker revolver hit like a hand cannon but was heavy and prone to bursting, so between 1848 and 1861 Colt refined it into the Dragoon, a .44 caliber six-shooter built for the mounted dragoon regiments that gave it its name. The third and final model added a rounded trigger guard and small refinements that made it the most polished of the big horse pistols.

It was a percussion cap-and-ball revolver, loaded from the front of the cylinder with loose powder and ball, its blued round barrel and color-casehardened frame built to take punishment. For a stretch of the 1850s, before lighter cartridge revolvers arrived, it was about the most powerful thing a rider could carry.