Dragged: Foot Caught in Stirrup

The horse bolts and the boot will not let go. They measure the drag at three hundred feet by the torn ground, and what they carry back to town barely looks like you, skinned to the bone in patches, hip wrenched from its socket, skull knocked on every stone in the county. The doctor works through the night with carbolic and silk and will not meet anyone's eyes.

• Abed and barely conscious, the doctor allows no visitors the first day
• Wrapped in carbolic-soaked dressings from shoulder to knee
• Hip set back in its socket but bearing no weight for 7 days
• /me lies swathed in dressings, only their face and one hand showing

Recovery A week under a doctor's constant care if you pull through at all, alone, you would not have made the night.·Doctor, urgently

A hundred feet of drag ends with your leg twisted under the horse's stride and the hip wrenched clean from its socket. Setting it takes the doctor, two strong men, and a folded belt between your teeth, the pop when it seats home is heard in the next room.

• No weight on that leg for 5 days, crutch or shoulder, your choice
• Road-rash down the whole dragged side, cleaned raw with carbolic
• The leg aches deep in the joint before rain, and will for a long while
• /me swings along on a crutch, dragged side stiff with bandages

Recovery 6 days if the doctor set it quick, 7 hard ones and a grinding joint if he didn't.·Doctor required

Your head strikes the ground over and over as the horse drags you, and one ear is half torn besides. When the boot finally slips you cannot remember what town you are in. The doctor stitches the ear, shines a candle in your eyes, and forbids you a saddle.

• Concussion, confused spells and a ringing skull for 3 days
• Ear stitched with silk and bandaged against your head for 5 days
• No riding for 4 days, the doctor's word, and he means it
• You keep losing the thread of conversations mid-sentence

Recovery 5 days of enforced quiet with care, 7 of dizziness and a ragged ear without.·Doctor required

The stirrup holds your foot at one angle while the drag insists on another, and the ankle gives with a wet crunch, broken and out of joint both. The doctor cuts your boot off in strips, weeps a little for its quality, and sets the joint with splints and plaster.

• Ankle splinted in plaster, crutches only for 6 days
• Your good boot died so your foot might live, buy its pair a drink
• Toes purple and fat as plums past the plaster's edge
• /me props a plastered ankle on the empty chair, crutches leaned close

Recovery 7 days splinted with a doctor's setting, unset, the foot points wrong forever.·Doctor required

The drag grinds gravel into your back and shoulder like pepper into a steak. The wounds themselves are shallow, it is the cleaning that breaks you, the doctor scrubbing grit from raw flesh with a carbolic brush and nothing for the pain but whiskey and a strap to bite.

• Back and shoulder swathed in dressings, changed daily for 4 days
• Cannot bear a shirt against the raw patches, you wear it loose and open
• Sleeping on your front only, for 4 days
• /me sits their chair backwards, keeping their raw back clear of the wood

Recovery 5 days with daily carbolic dressings, or 7 and a stinking fever if the grit stays in.·Doctor required

The drag twists your knee against the stirrup's hold until something inside gives with a sensation like a snapped fiddle string. It swells tight as a melon by evening and folds sideways if you trust it with your whole weight.

• Knee bound in wrapped splints, walk with a stick for 4 days
• No mounting from the left for 5 days; the bend is not in you
• The knee gives a sick little lurch on stairs, hold the rail

Recovery 5 days bound and rested, 7 with a hitch in your stride if you push it.·Doctor required

The horse's own hind hooves clip you twice as you drag beneath them, once across the shoulder, once along the ribs. Hoof-shaped bruises rise black as stove lids, and one rib creaks with deep breaths, cracked or near enough.

• Two crescent hoof-bruises, black and swollen, shirt off, they are frightening
• Ribs strapped as a precaution, no heavy lifting for 4 days
• Reaching across your body pulls the shoulder bruise and stops you cold
• /me presses a careful hand to hoof-shaped bruises, hissing through their teeth

Recovery 4 days for the deep bruising to loosen, 6 if a rib is truly cracked, a doctor can say which.·Doctor required

A half-buried stone peels a flap of scalp above your ear as you pass over it, and head wounds bleed like they mean to empty you. By the time the boot slips free you look like a massacre; the doctor stitches the flap down and assures everyone it is uglier than it is deadly.

• A stitched, shaved patch above one ear, your hat hides it, barely, for 5 days
• Blood-crusted collar and a face that frightened the townsfolk
• No hat brims pressing on it for 2 days, wear it tipped back

Recovery 5 days for the stitches, 7 and a wider bald scar if it festers.·Doctor required

Thirty feet of drag on your left side plane-shaves you from forearm to hip. Shirt and trousers are shredded to ribbons, and beneath them is one long weeping graze, shallow, ugly, and demanding a slow scrub at the washbasin.

• Left side scabbed from wrist to hip, it cracks and weeps when you stretch
• Your shirt and trousers are rags; the general store thanks you
• Scabs catch on your clothes with every long reach for 4 days
• /me moves with their left arm held out from their body, away from the raw side

Recovery 4 days scabbing clean if washed well, 6 itching ones if not.·Doctor advised

You kick free after a dozen yards, but the wrench of it turns your ankle halfway around in the boot. You limp after the horse cussing in two languages, and the ankle swells snug against the leather by the time you catch the reins.

• A hard limp, walk, never sprint, for 3 days
• Ankle wrapped in liniment rags each night
• Standing in the stirrup on that side costs you a wince, 3 days

Recovery 3 days wrapped and favored, 5 if you will not stay off it.·Doctor advised

The drag takes you across a stony wash, and you feel every rock in it through your back and hands where you clawed for a hold. You come free bruised down the spine with your palms cut in a dozen shallow places.

• Bruised back, no lifting saddles or sacks for 2 days
• Both palms nicked and stinging; gloves hurt going on for 2 days
• /me flexes cut-up hands slowly before gripping the reins

Recovery 3 days for the aches and nicks to settle, 4 without a wash and salve.·Doctor advised

The horse drags you the short way through a thicket, and the brush takes its toll in a hundred thin red lines. Every thorn in the county left a calling card in your hide, and your clothes look attacked by cats.

• Cross-hatched with welts and scratches on every bare inch, fading over 3 days
• Thorn tips work out of your skin for days; each one stings on its exit
• Clothes shredded to a scarecrow's wardrobe

Recovery 3 days of sting and itch, less if someone helps pull the thorns tonight.·Doctor advised

The drag ends quick but your hip took the whole first drop and every yard after. The bruise that rises there over the evening is the size of a dinner plate and runs through more colors than a medicine-show poster.

• A dinner-plate bruise on the hip, sitting a saddle stings for 2 days
• You favor that side rising from chairs and beds
• /me presses a hand to their hip when they think no one's looking

Recovery 3 days for the colors to fade to yellow; liniment shortens the show.·Doctor advised

You are dragged just far enough to learn genuine fear before the boot heel slips its hold. You sit up in the churned dirt shaking, scraped at elbow and hip, and a good deal more careful about checking your stirrups.

• Scraped elbow and hip that sting in the wash for 2 days
• A new, twitchy habit of testing your stirrup fit before every ride
• Dust ground into places dust should not reach

Recovery 2 days of sting and you are whole again.·No doctor needed

The horse drags you a rope's length across soft spring meadow before it thinks better of the whole business and stops to graze. You are stained green from shoulder to boot and your pride is grass-burned, but your hide came through nearly untouched.

• Grass burns on one forearm, tender for 1 day
• Green stains up one whole side that no scrubbing removes
• /me stares at the grazing horse with profound betrayal

Recovery A day for the grass burn; the stains are the shirt's problem now.·No doctor needed

You bellow the one word this horse has never once ignored, and it plants all four feet within three strides. You unhook your own boot from the stirrup, lying in the dirt at its heels, and the two of you agree never to speak of this.

• A wrenched ankle from the twist, sore for 1 day
• Dirt down your collar and a heartbeat that takes an hour to settle

Recovery A day of favoring the ankle and it is forgotten.·No doctor needed

Ten feet of drag, and your good coat takes every inch of it. When you get free and stand up, the coat's back is worn through to the lining, the skin beneath it hardly pinked. You will feel this one in your wallet more than your bones.

• A faint scrape between the shoulders, gone in a day
• Your coat is ruined, wear the ruin like a medal or buy anew
• /me shrugs off a coat worn through to the lining and sighs at it

Recovery A day, if that, the coat, however, is beyond any doctor.·No doctor needed

The tall underslung heel of your cowboy boot does the one job it was cut for, it pops free of the stirrup at the first hard jolt. You take one bounce off the sod and watch the horse thunder away with your left boot still swinging in the iron.

• One boot rides off without you, hop after the horse or wait for its return
• A single bruise on the seat of your pride
• /me stands in the road wearing one boot, watching the horse shrink into the distance

Recovery No healing needed, just a boot to reclaim and a cinch to check.·No doctor needed

The horse drags you exactly as far as the creek ford and loses you in the shallows, where the water lifts the weight and the boot floats free on its own. You sit in six inches of cold current, soaked to the ribs and laughing the fear out.

• Soaked through, wet leather and chafe until you change clothes
• Cold-water shivers for an hour
• A story that improves with every telling

Recovery None, dry socks fix everything that happened here.·No doctor needed

The stirrup takes your boot, the whole boot, clean off your foot, sock and all still in it, and you drop flat to the sod without a scratch as horse and boot gallop the horizon. When the horse trots back an hour later, sheepish, your boot is still standing upright in the stirrup like a soldier at post.

• Utterly unharmed, you walked out of your own boot at a gallop
• One bare foot until the horse returns your property
• /me accepts their boot back from the stirrup and tips it to the horse like a hat

Recovery Nothing to heal, some folks are simply not meant to die dragged.·No doctor needed