Arrow: Thigh & Leg

The arrowhead lay along the great artery of the thigh, and when the doctor's first pull shifted it, the vessel opened. Blood came in pulses, hot and impossibly fast, and a belt twisted tight around your upper thigh was the only argument left. By lamplight he cuts down to the vessel and ties it off with silk ligature, hands slick to the wrist, and tells whoever holds the lamp that the next hour decides whether you keep the leg, or anything at all.

• Bedridden and bled white, no standing under any circumstance for 5 days minimum, the leg raised on folded blankets
• The ligature wound and tourniquet mark checked for fresh bleeding every few hours for 2 days
• No riding for 3 weeks, then a mounting block and a steady shoulder for 2 weeks more
• /me lies gray and still, lips moving without sound, one hand resting on the thick wrap at the groin

Recovery Six to eight weeks if the ligature holds and no fever comes, and the leg answers slowly for months after.·Doctor, urgently

The broadhead skipped along the thigh bone and seated itself there, edges bedded in the muscle a hand deep. Pulling would have torn more than it freed, so the doctor cut down along the shaft with you biting a strap, worked the blades loose from the bone with forceps, and washed the channel with carbolic that burned worse than the arrow did. The bone is scored but whole. The muscle is another matter.

• The right thigh sewn and bound stiff, no weight on that leg without a cane and a shoulder for 6 days
• No riding, no crouching, no ladder work for 2 weeks
• The wound washed and re-dressed daily against infection for 10 days, any fever means the doctor at once
• /me moves in short flat steps, the right leg swung from the hip like a fence post

Recovery Three to four weeks before the thigh takes a full stride, and it aches at the bone longer.·Doctor, urgently

The shaft went in the front of the thigh and out the back, missing bone and the great vessels by the width of a prayer. Clean through is the kindest way to take an arrow, and still the doctor drew a carbolic-soaked seton through the channel to keep it draining, stitched both mouths partway, and bound the leg from hip to knee. Two holes, one channel, and every step reminds you of all three.

• Both wound mouths and the channel drain checked morning and night for 7 days
• Walking only with a cane and only as far as the privy for 4 days
• No riding for 10 days, then a walk only, no trot
• /me stands canted, all the weight poured onto the left leg, the right toe barely touching earth

Recovery A fortnight of the cane, and the deep channel a month behind it.·Doctor required

The barbs made pulling impossible, so the doctor did the old, terrible arithmetic: he pushed. The head was driven on through the calf until it tented the far skin, a nick of the knife freed it, and the shaft followed the way it had been going all along. You now own two wounds where the arrow made one, and a calf that seizes like a fist around both.

• The left calf bound and the ankle wrapped stiff, no more than twenty steps at a stretch for 5 days, cane in hand
• No riding above a walk and no running whatsoever for 2 weeks
• Both wound mouths washed with carbolic water twice daily for a week
• /me eases the left boot along the ground, the calf held rigid as green wood

Recovery Two to three weeks before the calf loosens, a month before it forgets.·Doctor required

The shaft snapped when you fell, and the head stayed in your thigh with a hand's width of splintered wood for company. The doctor went in after it with a probe and bullet forceps, chasing slivers by feel while you counted knots in the ceiling beam, and laid out on the tray what he found: the head, three splinters, and a plug of trouser wool that would have festered by Friday.

• The right thigh sewn and dressed, checked daily for a week, any deep heat or foul smell means the probe again
• Walking with a cane for 5 days, no riding for 8
• /me presses two careful fingers around the dressing, hunting for the ache of anything left behind

Recovery Ten days to a fortnight, provided nothing was left in the deep to sour.·Doctor required

The arrow stood in the meat of your calf like a surveyor's stake, buried past the head. Drawing it took the doctor a braced knee and a slow count of three, and the blood that followed filled a tin cup before the packing went in. It missed the bone. It did not miss much else, and the calf knows it every time your heel touches ground.

• The left calf packed and bound, the dressing changed daily for 6 days
• A cane and a short stride for a week, no standing watch and no long walks
• No riding for 5 days, then walk the horse only for 5 more
• /me sets the heel down first and shortens every step on the left side

Recovery A week on the cane, and the calf firm again inside three.·Doctor required

The arrow struck your shin dead on and the bone won, mostly. The head crumpled a chip from the bone's face and lodged in the muscle beside it, and the doctor drew it, fished out one gritty flake of bone with forceps, and splinted the lower leg to keep you honest. The bone is not broken through. It will spend a month reminding you it was insulted.

• The right shin splinted with two wooden slats and a firm wrap for 2 weeks
• Walking with a cane and no faster than a stroll for 10 days
• No jumping down from wagon, porch, or saddle for 3 weeks
• /me swings the splinted right leg wide of every stone and root in the path

Recovery Two weeks in the splint, and the shin tender to the touch for a month past it.·Doctor required

The arrow sank into the outer thigh and stopped in muscle, polite enough to miss everything a doctor loses sleep over. It still had to come out, and out is never as gentle as in: a widened cut, a slow pull, a wash of carbolic, silk sutures, and a spoonful of laudanum that made the ceiling drift. You will walk. You will also complain, and you will be right to.

• The left thigh sutured and dressed, kept dry for 5 days
• A cane for 4 days and no riding for 6
• No lifting past a bucket's weight while the sutures hold, 8 days
• /me favors the left leg and keeps a palm hovering near the thigh when anyone walks close

Recovery Sutures out in 8 days, the thigh at full strength inside three weeks.·Doctor advised

The arrow passed through the meat of the calf and out the other side, so quick you turned to see who had thrown a stone. Two clean mouths, no bone, no cords, and a doctor who called it, with professional envy, a tidy piece of shooting. Washed, stitched partway, bound. You will walk with a cane and a story, and only one of them is heavy.

• Walking with a cane and a short stride for 5 days
• Both wound mouths kept clean and dry, the dressing changed every other day for a week
• No running or hard riding for 10 days
• /me taps the cane along and swings the bandaged calf through, unhurried

Recovery A week on the cane, the calf whole again in two more.·Doctor advised

The head buried itself two knuckles deep in the outer thigh and stuck, the shaft waggling with every heartbeat like a signpost to bad luck. The doctor braced, drew it in one pull, and held a carbolic pad on the wound while you invented three new curses. Four silk stitches closed it. The bruise beneath will outlast them all.

• Four stitches in the left thigh, kept dry for 5 days
• No riding at speed and no crouching low for 5 days
• /me sits down in stages, the left leg out straight as a wagon tongue

Recovery Stitches out in 6 days, sound inside a fortnight.·Doctor advised

The arrow took your calf at a shallow angle and plowed a furrow along it, a hand long and a finger deep, before burying itself in the dirt beyond. It never stopped inside you, which the doctor calls fortune and your calf calls splitting hairs. The furrow is cleaned, drawn together with sutures, and bound, and it burns like a brand when the binding shifts.

• A hand-long sutured furrow on the right calf, a loose wrap and no boot rubbing on it for 6 days
• Walking is fine, running is forbidden for a week
• /me hitches the trouser leg clear of the wrapped calf before sitting

Recovery Sutures out in a week, a proud scar and nothing else in three.·Doctor advised

The arrow caught the back of your thigh where the hamstring cords run, and for one cold moment you thought of every hamstrung horse you have ever seen put down. The head had turned flat against the cords instead of through them. The doctor drew it, pressed the cords with his thumb, watched your knee bend, and let out a breath he pretended he had not been holding.

• The back of the left thigh dressed, no full sprint and no kicking a stirrup free for 8 days
• Bending to lift is done slowly at the knees or not at all for 5 days
• /me walks with a shortened stride, the left knee never quite straightening

Recovery Ten days of a careful stride, then the leg is yours again.·Doctor advised

The arrow glanced through the soft hollow behind your knee, slicing skin and sparing the cords by a margin you will not brag about, because it keeps people up nights. The cut took five stitches. The bruise flooding the joint took none, and it is the bruise that has opinions: the knee bends to a point and then simply declines.

• Five stitches behind the right knee, no full squat and no kneeling on that side for 7 days
• Stairs and ladders taken one step at a time, leading with the left, for 5 days
• /me keeps the right knee soft and half bent, pivoting on the other heel to turn

Recovery A week of a stiff knee, stitches out in 7 days, full bend inside two weeks.·Doctor advised

An inch of iron in the calf and no more: the arrow was near spent when it found you, and it hung there like a dart in a tavern board. You pulled it yourself before good sense could vote. It bled honestly, took a whiskey wash and a tight-tied kerchief, and the doctor, when you finally showed him, added one stitch mostly on principle.

• One stitch and a kerchief binding on the left calf, kept clean for 4 days
• No wading in river or trough water until it closes, 5 days
• /me thumbs the small knot of bandage at the calf and rolls the trouser cuff back down

Recovery Closed in 4 or 5 days, forgotten in ten.·Doctor advised

The arrow grazed the outside of your thigh in passing, opening a furrow no deeper than a bad shaving cut but a good deal longer. It bled dramatic and healed plain: washed with whiskey, a strip of clean shirt bound around, and the rest left to pride. The trousers took it worse than the leg did.

• A bound graze on the right thigh, the binding kept on for 3 days
• Sitting a saddle stings for a day or two, no restriction beyond complaint
• /me shifts in the saddle and resettles the strip of cloth tied about the thigh

Recovery Scabbed in 3 days, gone in a week.·No doctor needed

The arrow caught you just above the boot top, slicing skin across the calf before spending itself in the grass. Two fingers lower and the boot leather would have taken it whole. The cut is shallow and clean, closed with a plaster and a wrap, and your chief injury is to a good pair of socks.

• A plastered cut above the left boot top, the wrap changed once at day 2 and off by day 4
• Boots pulled on gently for a few days, no restriction otherwise
• /me winces once pulling the boot past the wrapped cut, then stamps the heel home

Recovery Closed in 4 days, a thin white line by summer's end.·No doctor needed

The arrow skipped off your shin the way a flat stone skips off a pond, splitting the skin over the bone and howling away into the brush. The bone rang like a struck rail and the split bled down into your boot, but the doctor's whole verdict was a cleaning, two stitches, and the observation that shins are wasted on the living.

• Two stitches over the right shin, no banging it on ladder rungs or wagon tongues for 5 days
• A knot of bruise on the bone, kneeling on the right side is off for 4 days
• /me rubs above the stitched shin, careful to come at it from the side

Recovery Stitches out in 6 days, the bone bruise tender for two weeks.·Doctor advised

The arrow passed through the loose cloth of your trouser leg and out the other side, taking a pinch of skin off the thigh no bigger than a flea bite. You stood there wearing an arrow through your pants like a dandy's pin, entirely unharmed and entirely unable to convince anyone of it until you dropped the trousers to prove the point.

• A scraped pinch of skin on the thigh, nothing to bind and nothing to favor
• The trousers want a patch before Sunday
• /me pokes a finger through the twin holes in the trouser leg and whistles low

Recovery The skin forgets by morning. The trousers never do.·No doctor needed

The arrow buried itself in the wing of your chaps and stuck there, quivering, its point just kissing the calf beneath. The mark it left is a red line you had to search for. The chaps, being good bullhide, are now improved by a story hole, and you have been slapping people's hands away from the arrow all afternoon.

• A faint red line on the calf, no binding needed
• The arrow stays in the chap leather as an exhibit for at least a day, obviously
• /me tilts the chap wing to the light so the buried arrow shows to best advantage

Recovery The line fades by tomorrow.·No doctor needed

The arrow came at your thigh true and killing, and met instead the loose wing of your chaps as you turned, driving through the leather and burying itself two inches into the corral post behind you. For one heartbeat you were pinned to the fence like a note left for the morning shift, untouched, while the shaft hummed beside your leg. You cut yourself loose with your own knife and kept the arrow, and nobody who was there tells it the same way twice, though every version is true.

• Not a mark on you, though the chaps carry a slit worth pointing at
• You owe the corral post nothing, but the story is now community property
• /me produces the kept arrow from behind the gun belt and sights down the shaft, grinning

Recovery Nothing to heal. The telling of it will outlive the fence.·No doctor needed