Fall from High Cliff (30+ ft)

The brush slows you and the rocks finish it. You're breathing when they find you, but wrong, shallow and wet, lips going grey, blood flecking your coughs. The doctor is honest about what 1899 can do for bleeding on the inside, which is little beyond morphine, stillness, and hope.

• Carried by wagon at a walking pace, every jolt steals your breath
• Coughing blood; skin pale as candle tallow
• Morphine sleep and a vigil, friends take turns at the bedside
• /me breathes in shallow sips, a red fleck at the corner of the mouth

Recovery A week's vigil under morphine if you're to live at all; the doctor makes no promises and the undertaker takes no offense·Doctor, urgently

A pine bough breaks the fall halfway and your thigh bone breaks the rest. You lie in the duff where you landed until they find you, the big bone bent wrong beneath you and the cold shakes of shock setting in.

• Splinted where you lie before anyone dares move you
• Weights-and-pulleys traction, bedridden for 6 days entire
• Shock: wrapped in every blanket in the house, fed sweet coffee by the spoon
• /me shivers under a mound of blankets, one leg hoisted in the traction rig

Recovery 6 days strung in traction under a doctor, then crutches earn their keep; unset, the bone drifts and must be broken fresh·Doctor, urgently

You cartwheel through brush and land chest-first across a downed log. Ribs stave in along one side and every breath comes short and whistling, the doctor listens long with his ear against your back, waiting for the sound of a lung in trouble.

• Propped upright day and night for 4 days, lying flat is drowning
• No lifting or riding for 6 days
• Watched for blood in the coughs for 2 days
• /me sits propped in the corner bed, breathing like each lungful is on credit

Recovery 6 days wrapped and propped with a doctor's daily ear on your chest; alone, one bad cough could turn it much worse·Doctor, urgently

You hit twice on the way down, a ledge takes your forearm, the bottom takes your ankle, and both snap. Splinted wrist-to-elbow and heel-to-knee, you're a carpentry project that eats with one borrowed hand.

• Arm in plaster, no use of that hand for 6 days
• No weight on the ankle for 6 days, crutches, and someone to fetch
• Carried, carted, and cussing your way through every doorway

Recovery 7 days of plaster and crutches with a doctor's setting; unset, both limbs knit crooked and want re-breaking·Doctor required

You strike the long scree apron instead of the rocks and ride it down in a roaring cloud of stones. It grinds you raw and cracks a rib or two, but it spends the fall an inch at a time instead of all at once.

• Road-rash down one entire side, weeping through shirts for 3 days
• Ribs strapped, no lifting for 4 days
• An evening picking gravel out of your elbows by lamplight

Recovery 4 days strapped and salved with a doctor's care, 6 raw and stubborn without·Doctor required

A dead pine juts from the cliff base and you crash through it limb by limb to the bottom. Every branch takes its bite, you land gashed, gouged, and wearing more bark than shirt, but the tree spent the fall for you.

• A dozen gashes; three earn silk sutures
• Stiff as a frozen gate for 3 days
• Picking bark and pine pitch out of wounds for 2 days
• /me smells of pitch and carbolic in equal measure, moving like a rusted hinge

Recovery 4 days stitched and salved, 6 if the deep ones sour for want of carbolic·Doctor required

You don't remember landing. You remember morning, frost on your coat, a headache like a driven spike, and a horse that has eaten every plant within rein's reach. Somewhere between the cliff top and now, a whole night went missing.

• A night lost entirely, you will never get the story straight
• No fast riding or gun work for 3 days
• Sick in bright light for 2 days
• The skull needs a doctor's hands on it, soon

Recovery 3 days of quiet under a doctor's watch, 5 foggy ones alone, and no second knocks·Doctor required

The snow-dusted talus takes you hip-first and something in the joint cracks without letting go. You can stand, barely, the way a condemned barn is standing.

• Two sticks to walk for 4 days, and you lean on both
• No saddle for 5 days, wagon rides and charity
• A hip bruise the size of a saddle blanket, going black by stages

Recovery 5 days of sticks and short walks with a doctor's say-so, 7 if you rush the saddle·Doctor required

The cliff face is furred with chokecherry and serviceberry, and you hit every bush it owns. You arrive at the bottom scratched, whipped, and furious, slowed so many times the ground barely gets its say.

• Whip-welts and scratches over every exposed inch for 3 days
• One eye swollen half-shut by a branch for 2 days
• /me peels a chokecherry twig out of their collar and glares back up the cliff

Recovery 3 days of stinging, 5 for the welts to fade to stories·Doctor advised

A root juts from the cliff face and you catch it one-handed at speed. It doesn't hold, but it turns the fall into a tumble, and the wrench it gives your shoulder is the price of the softer landing it bought you.

• Arm slung for 3 days
• Nothing raised above shoulder height for 3 days
• Aches at night like the root still has hold of it

Recovery 3 days slung and rubbed with liniment, 5 if you keep reaching with it·Doctor advised

Deep drifted sand at the cliff base takes the landing, but thirty feet is thirty feet, both ankles light up like kicked hives and swell over the boot-tops by nightfall.

• Both ankles wrapped, walk, never sprint, for 4 days
• Boots off for 2 days; rides in wrapped socks like an invalid king
• Stairs and stirrups negotiated slowly, with commentary

Recovery 4 days wrapped and propped, 6 if you keep standing all day·Doctor advised

The slope catches you seat-first and toboggans you the last twenty feet on your backside. The tailbone survives, barely, and lodges a formal complaint every time you sit for days.

• Cannot sit flat for 3 days, perches, leans, and stands at meals
• Rides standing in the stirrups, hissing on the trots
• Rises from any chair in stages, like a derrick

Recovery 3 days of careful sitting, 5 if you keep long hours in the saddle·Doctor advised

A ledge, a bush, a snowbank, three landings, each softer than the last. Your ribs are bruised deep from the first one, and breathing deep feels like wearing a barrel two sizes too small.

• No lifting for 3 days
• Guards one side, flinches from every friendly backslap
• Sleeps propped up on saddlebags for 2 days

Recovery 3 days of shallow breathing, 5 before a deep breath comes free·Doctor advised

A big fir grows against the cliff and you fall through it like a ladder laid on end, hitting every rung soft. You step off the bottom bough with scratches, sap in your hair, and a new religion.

• Sap in your hair for 2 days, the comb is a lost cause
• Scratches cross-hatched down both forearms
• Fir needles working out of your collar for a day

Recovery 2 days of stinging scratches; the sap outlasts everything·No doctor needed

The drift at the base is deeper than a grave and softer than any bed you've paid for. You punch in to the shoulders and have to be dug out backward, wet, freezing, and impossibly whole.

• Soaked and chilled, a fire and dry clothes before dark, or worse follows
• Snow packed into places snow has no business being
• Shivering for an hour, grinning the entire time

Recovery An hour by the fire, a night's sleep, and it's a story·No doctor needed

You land flat in the one boggy seep at the cliff foot, and the mud takes the blow with a sound like a giant's boot pulled free. Winded, filthy, and bruised, but the mountain's best shot bought only that.

• A gasping minute flat on your back in the mire
• Mud in everything you own until wash day
• One bruised shoulder for a day
• /me squelches with every step, leaving a trail a blind man could follow

Recovery A day for the shoulder; the smell negotiates its own timeline·No doctor needed

Ledge to bush to scree, you bleed the fall off in installments and stand up at the bottom before you quite believe it. Elbows, shins, and chin all barked raw, the trail-toll of the luckiest bad step you ever took.

• Raw elbows and shins for 2 days
• A chin scab that invites questions you can't answer with dignity
• Hands that shake for an hour after

Recovery 2 days of stinging, then just the chin scab to explain·No doctor needed

Thirty feet of air ends in the season's one perfect snowdrift, packed against the cliff base like it was ordered ahead. You stand up in a you-shaped hole, cold, shaken, and unbruised, while your hat floats down after you.

• Shivering until the fire's built
• A you-shaped hole in the drift worth walking folks out to see
• Nerves that need a stiff drink and an early night

Recovery Warm by supper, sound by morning·No doctor needed

The ancient juniper halfway down catches you full in its arms and holds. You climb down its trunk like a staircase, smelling of gin-berries, with one scratch and a story no one will believe without visiting the tree.

• One proud scratch across the cheek, the tree's signature
• Smells of juniper for 2 days
• Takes people out to meet the tree, formally

Recovery The scratch scabs in 2 days; the gratitude is permanent·No doctor needed

Your duster snags a dead pine root ten feet down and holds, you dangle over the whole drop, spinning slow, boots swinging above the rocks that were meant for you. You climb your own coat back to the ledge and stand there a long, quiet minute before you laugh.

• Rope-burned palms from climbing your own coat, sore for a day
• A torn coat lining, the tailor gets the whole story whether he wants it or not
• /me hangs their duster on the peg with visible respect, like retiring a war horse

Recovery A day for the palms; the coat is mended, framed in memory, and never lent·No doctor needed