Arm & Forearm: Revolver: Straight Through

The ball passed through your inner arm and nicked the brachial artery on its way out, blood leaves you in bright ropes with every heartbeat. A belt cinched above the wound and a screaming ride to the doctor is the only story that does not end in the ground, and even then the arm may go gray past saving.

• Blood soaks through any dressing in minutes until the tourniquet bites
• Arm below the wound is cold, white and useless for days
• No use of the arm at all for 7 days, then a sling
• /me sags against the wall, boot heels sliding, one red hand clamped over the spurting arm

Recovery Tourniquet within minutes and a surgeon the same hour, or you bleed out; 7 days abed either way.·Doctor, urgently

In one side, out the other, but the soft lead kissed the humerus in passing and left a crack running up the bone. The arm folds wrong when you try to lift it, and the doctor splints it board-straight from shoulder to elbow.

• Arm splinted and slung tight to the chest for 7 days, no shooting, roping or lifting with it
• Grinding ache deep in the bone whenever the horse changes gait

Recovery Splinted 7 days under a doctor before light use; without one the crack spreads and the arm sets crooked.·Doctor required

The ball tunneled past the radial nerve and the lightning of it dropped you where you stood. Now your wrist hangs like a hanged man's neck, the hand lives, but it will not lift, and a pistol slides straight out of your fingers.

• Wrist drop: the gun hand cannot raise a pistol, pour a drink or sign a name for 5 days
• Pins and needles crawling from elbow to thumb, worse at night
• Entry and exit both bound in carbolic-soaked linen

Recovery Feeling crawls back over 5 days with a doctor's splint and rubbing, 7 or more without.·Doctor required

The entry is a neat purple hole, but the exit blew out the back of your arm ragged as a dog-chewed boot, dragging shirt cloth and powder the whole way through. The doctor spends an hour picking threads out of the channel before he dares close it.

• Exit wound packed open and draining, dressings changed twice a day for 4 days
• Fever sweats the first two nights; any stink from the wound means ride for the doctor
• Arm slung, no lifting heavier than a coffee cup for 5 days
• /me peels a stiff brown dressing off the ragged exit wound and swallows hard

Recovery 5 days with daily carbolic washes; untreated it festers within 2 and doubles the bed time.·Doctor required

The ball threaded the forearm between radius and ulna and blew out beside the tendons. Both holes weep steady, and every time you make a fist you can feel the torn muscle pull along the channel.

• Grip at half strength for 4 days, a rifle wavers, a rope burns through
• Forearm wrapped wrist to elbow; blood spots the linen the first 2 days

Recovery 4 days if a doctor washes and stitches both holes, 6 hard ones if you plug it with a bar rag.·Doctor required

Clean through the thick of the bicep, missing bone by the width of a prayer. It is the good kind of bad, two holes to stop and a muscle that screams when you so much as reach for your hat.

• Arm in a sling 3 days; no drawing from the holster on that side
• Lifting anything heavier than a plate reopens the entry hole
• Deep purple bruising from shoulder to elbow by the second day

Recovery 3 days with sutures and a sling, 5 to 6 if all it gets is whiskey and a shirt-sleeve wrap.·Doctor required

In the front, out the back, both holes wide enough for a finger. The doctor plugs them, flushes the channel with carbolic that burns worse than the ball did, and stitches you shut with black silk while you count the ceiling boards.

• Twelve silk stitches split between two holes, pull one and the doc charges double
• Arm slung 3 days, then stiff and careful for 2 more
• /me grips the table edge white-knuckled as the carbolic hits the open channel

Recovery 3 days stitched and slung; unstitched holes take 6 and leave puckered twin scars.·Doctor required

The ball dragged half your shirtsleeve and a smear of unburnt powder through the wound with it. The holes themselves are honest, but the channel between is filthy, and filth is what kills men in 1899.

• Wound syringed with carbolic twice daily for 3 days, it burns like a brand each time
• Low fever the first night; watch for red streaks running up the arm
• Ring of dead skin around the entry, peppered black with powder

Recovery 3 days if flushed clean early, 6 and a fever if the cloth is left to rot in the track.·Doctor required

Straight through the outer swell of the bicep, missing everything a man was born needing. Two coin-sized holes, a steady but honest bleed, and an arm that will forgive you in a few days.

• Arm slung for 2 days, tender for 2 more
• No roping or heavy lifting with that arm for 3 days

Recovery 2 days with stitches and a clean wrap, 4 if it is just whiskey and a neckerchief.·Doctor advised

The ball passed through the meat on the thumb side of the forearm. Nothing broken, nothing severed, but your grip has gone soft as a banker's handshake and the wrap needs changing every morning.

• Grip too weak to hold a rifle steady for 3 days, pistols one-handed only
• Dressing changed daily; the exit weeps for 2 days
• Forearm bruised yellow-green from wrist to elbow by day three

Recovery 3 days with a doctor's wrap and sling, 5 without.·Doctor advised

The ball came in at a slant and traveled four inches under the meat before it found daylight again. A long, shallow channel, ugly to look at, honest to heal, and a scar you will be showing off in bars for years.

• A hand-span of stitched channel along the arm, wrapped for 3 days
• Skin pulls tight over the track whenever you straighten the elbow
• /me pushes up the sleeve and shows off the long stitched line, proud as a new father

Recovery 3 days sutured, 4 to 5 if left to scab in the open air.·Doctor advised

Through the triceps just above the joint, and now the elbow has stiffened up like a rusted gate hinge. The holes are small and clean, but bending your arm past halfway brings water to your eyes.

• Elbow bends to half its reach for 3 days, no dealing cards, no fast reins
• Arm carried straight at your side; the sling chafes worse than the wound
• Two neat scars a hand-width apart, front and back

Recovery 3 days and gentle bending with a doctor's say-so, 5 stiff ones without.·Doctor advised

The cleanest kind of dirty luck, a small entry, a slightly wider exit, and nothing between them but muscle that will mend. The doc plugs both holes, binds the arm, and tells you that you were born under a lucky sign.

• Arm bound and rested 2 days, light use for 1 more
• Both holes itch like fury as they close, no scratching
• /me picks at the edge of the arm wrapping until the doc slaps the hand away

Recovery 2 days bound with a doctor's plug-and-wash, 4 with a trail dressing.·Doctor advised

The ball clipped through the outer edge of your upper arm, more meat than misfortune. In and out through an inch of flesh, it bled fierce for ten minutes and then settled into a sulk.

• Tender arm for 2 days; the shirt sleeve sticks to the dressing
• No lifting the arm above shoulder height for 1 day

Recovery 1 to 2 days with a wash and a wrap, 3 if you let it ride dirty.·Doctor advised

The ball ducked under the skin of your forearm and surfaced two inches on, never diving deeper than a fingernail. Two small holes joined by a raised purple welt, like a mole tunneled through a garden.

• Forearm wrapped 2 days; the welt is hot and tender to the touch
• Aches when you grip a rope or a rein hard

Recovery 2 days wrapped; it heals near as fast without a doctor, just uglier.·No doctor needed

In and out through the loose flesh below your shoulder, so shallow the doc could see daylight through the track when you lifted the arm. Sting, blood, cussing, in that order, and not much else.

• Stings for a day; stiff the morning after
• A pair of puckered dots that will pass for a snakebite in poor light

Recovery 1 day of tenderness, 2 at most; clean it once and forget it.·No doctor needed

A small blessing at speed, the ball punched through the very outside of the arm and kept its manners the whole way. You did not even drop what you were holding, though you did say a word your mother would not like.

• Dull ache for 1 day; a plaster and a rolled sleeve covers it
• Two dot scars added to the tally

Recovery A day of ignoring it and it is done; whiskey optional but traditional.·No doctor needed

The ball passed through the loose inner flesh of your arm, the pinch that rests on a bar top, through and through without touching a working part. It bled less than a barber's nick and hurt about the same.

• A twinge when you press on it, nothing more
• Two small scabs you will forget by Sunday

Recovery Wash it with whatever is in your flask; healed over in a day.·No doctor needed

In and out through a pinch of flesh, and then the spent ball slapped into your saddlebag and stopped against your coffee tin. The holes in your arm are smaller than the dent in the tin.

• Barely tender to the touch by nightfall
• /me rattles the dented coffee tin and grins at the ball rolling inside

Recovery Overnight; the coffee tin never recovers.·No doctor needed

The doctor probes both holes twice because he does not believe them, the ball threaded between radius and ulna, past tendon, nerve and vessel, and never kissed a one. He asks to sketch your arm for a journal back east; you ask for the whiskey first.

• Arm sore like a hard day's work, gone in a day
• A doctor's sketch of your arm may one day appear in a Boston medical journal
• /me holds out the arm, turning it in the lamplight, still not quite believing it either

Recovery A day's stiffness; the story outlives the wound by fifty years.·No doctor needed