It was a very in depth book which also parallel Texas history since both Comanche history and Texas history are strongly linked.
One part of it followed the formation of the Texas Rangers. Long story short, the Comanches were the world’s finest light horse cavalry. They did everything on horseback. Comanche kids learned to ride at age six and had their own horse by 12. Other Indian tribes only had a few horses and most women walked. Not so with Comanches where everyone rode. It wasn’t unusual for a Comanche man and wife to own 300 horses. The entire tribe could have thousands. Raiding was their way of life. To fight these raids, which often took place at night under a “Comanche Moon” (a summer full moon), the Texas Rangers were formed. The Rangers were a mangy bunch, loosely structured of mostly young men in their twenties looking for adventure. They were armed with a musket pistol or two and a Kentucky long rifle. Comparatively, the Comanche warriors were armed with a bow and arrow, a 14 foot lance and a round buffalo hide shield that was so tough it was actually bullet proof against musket balls. Those old westerns where indians are leaning over and under the neck of their horse firing arrows? That’s true and Comanches would do it using the horse as a shield while they got off 5 arrows in the time it took a Texan to load, aim and shoot one Kentucky rifle.
Up to that point in history, all indian tribes , except Comanches, and Europeans/Texans would ride to battle on their horses, stop and leave their horses under guard while they advanced to attack on foot. Shooting a Kentucky rifle from horseback was difficult and even harder to reload. The Comanches recognized this tactic and simply road around them to attack the horse guard(s) and steal the horses. Stranded, the horseless Texans often died from being stranded a hundred miles or more in the middle of nowhere. One famous Texas Ranger, John Coffee “Jack” Hays (about age 23), recognized the danger of leaving their horses behind, and chose to use hit’n’run tactics against the Comanches on horseback. Due to the difficulty of reloading their muskets on horseback, one fast pass at a group of Comanches was all they could do.
Meanwhile, back East, a young man named Samuel Colt had developed a 5-shot repeating pistol and tried to sell it to the US Army. It was a .36 caliber pistol which couldn’t be reloaded very easily. Since the Army fought dismounted like most everyone else, they effectively told Colt “WTF would we do with this?” and passed on the invention. Colt eventually sold 1000 of the pistols to the Texas Navy (only God knows why the Texas Navy bought them) but then went out of business losing his machinery but retaining his patents. A few years later Sam Houston dissolved the Texas Navy and the pistols went into storage. It was then that John Hays heard about those pistols and knew he could do something with them. He talked to Houston and was given several of the pistols for him men. Now, armed with a couple repeating pistols each, the Texas Rangers could make a couple of passes on horseback against the Comanches to devastating effect. The Comanches started avoiding the Texas Rangers. Among the men under Hays was another young man, Sam Walker. A few years later in the mid-1840s Walker was in the Northeast for the nation of Texas. Meanwhile, the US Army had seen the superiority of the Texas Ranger horseback tactics and approached Sam Colt with an order for new pistols. Since Colt only had his patents and nothing else, he had to start from scratch. He contacted Walker and asked him for advice on making the new pistol. Walker had lots of advice and, effectively told him “Make it a bigger fucking gun!” The .36 ball was too small so Colt made it a .44. Walker also told him to make it more powerful so the revolver held 60 grains of power in each chamber, twice what was normal for a black powder pistol. The pistol also had to be reloadable in the field so a reloading lever was attached to the pistol. The new pistol was heavy at about 5 pounds but had a 100 yard effective range. It was ready for both the US Army and the Texas Rangers by 1847 and the used effectively in attacking the Comanches. Admiring their tactics and effectiveness, when the Mexican-American War started, the US Army asked Walker and his Rangers to joined them, which they did with brutal efficiency. Unfortunately, Walker was killed in Mexico in 1847 but his name lives on in the Walker Colt. Sam Colt went on to invent the Single Action Army, Colt Peacemaker and one of the richest men in America thanks to the Texas Rangers.
Those three are my pistols. 
