Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood) carries two Colt Walker 1847 revolvers in twin holsters as his primary sidearms, although he carries four pistols in total. While not supposed to be known by the audience, the guns are converted to fire metallic cartridges instead of firing percussion cap and ball, since this it is safer to use blanks than firing blackpowder blank shot. While some of the guns are anachronistically seen with conventional metallic conversion kits with ejector rods and loading gates, these guns lack these features to try to hide its conversion. In some scenes though, the guns are non-firing models which do have percussion nipples so the audience can be tricked into thinking the guns are a percussion only. The famous image in which Wales poses with his Colt Walkers is a good example.
In the film, there are multiple variants of the Colt 1860 Army revolver (despite the fact there was only one available during the Civil War, since cartridge conversions didn't exist at the time), including:
Standard
The most common version of the Colt Army in the film is the standard version without an obvious conversion such as a Richards-Mason. Even so, almost all of them have a hidden cartridge conversion since it is safer to shoot metallic blank catridges than black powder blank shot.
When Wales' family is first murdered by the Red Legs, he retrieves a gun from the ashes of his house, which is a Colt Army with a cartridge conversion and a loading gate only. Due to quick camera cuts, it appears he fires far more than six shots at a time.
Lone Watie (Chief Dan George) sneaks up on Wales and holds a Colt Army with a Richards Conversion (has a rear sight added to the breech ring instead of the rear sight on the hammer, has a frame-mounted firing pin, and a hammer modified to strike this firing pin. Also had ejector rod and loading gate) on him, boasting that only an Indian can sneak up on someone. Wales agrees and in a second, Watie has a gun to his head from Little Moonlight (Geraldine Keams).
Used by Union troops to mow down Wale's comrades after they surrender. Wales kills one of the gun's team then uses it to mow down Union troops and destroy the other gun.
