Horse Falls or Rolls onto Rider

The horse rears over backward and the saddle horn drives into your belly with the whole animal behind it. The doctor's hands go gentle and his voice goes flat, something is torn deep inside where no frontier surgeon can reach, and all medicine has to offer is morphine, candlelight, and whoever you want sent for.

• Carried to a bed you may not leave, belly rigid and drum-tight
• Morphine haze, drifting in and out, saying things you'd never say sober
• Time to speak any last words you've been saving
• /me lies gray-faced and still, hands folded over their belly

Recovery There is no fixing a burst gut in 1899, days if any, and the doctor will not lie to you.·Doctor, urgently

The horse comes down at speed and your thigh is under the barrel of it when the ground arrives. The femur, the big bone, the one that is not supposed to break, snaps like a wagon tongue. The doctor splints hip to ankle with board and plaster and speaks honestly about the limp that may stay.

• Leg splinted board-stiff hip to ankle, bedbound, then crutches, for 7 days
• Moved by wagon or not at all the first 3 days
• The doctor massages and reworks the splint daily against the muscle wasting
• /me lies with one leg boarded straight, gripping the bedframe through the worst of it

Recovery The full 7 days splinted under a doctor and months feeling it after, unset, the leg shortens and the limp is certain.·Doctor, urgently

The horse stumbles in a gopher hole and rolls across your lower leg, and the ankle crushes under a thousand pounds like a nut in a door hinge. The doctor sets what he can feel, plasters the rest, and tells you flat that this foot decides its own schedule now.

• Foot and ankle in plaster, crutches only, no weight at all, for 7 days
• Toes past the plaster go purple, then black, then slowly back
• Riding only if someone else saddles and boosts you, from day 4
• /me swings between crutches, one plastered foot held clear of the ground

Recovery 7 days plastered with a doctor's care, toughed out, the bones knit like a bag of gravel.·Doctor required

The horse rolls fully across your chest before finding its feet. You hear yourself creak. Several ribs crack under the weight, and for a black moment you cannot pull any air at all. The doctor straps your chest and watches you for two days like a hawk watches a hole.

• Chest strapped in bandages, shallow sips of air for 6 days
• No lifting, riding hard, or raising your voice for 5 days
• The doctor checks your breathing morning and night against blood in the lung
• /me holds their ribs and breathes like the air is rationed

Recovery 6 days strapped with watching, 7 and a real chance of fever in the lung without.·Doctor required

The horse goes down on your leg and lies there a long half-minute, dazed, while your knee twists a way knees do not go. When it finally lurches up, the leg comes free wrong, ligaments torn, the joint loose and hot and filling like a waterskin.

• Knee bound in splint-wraps, a stick to walk and no saddle for 3 days
• The joint buckles sideways without warning, stairs are your enemy
• Swollen too tight for your trouser leg; it is split to the knee
• Roll on the horse's table too, partner, it went down hard as you did

Recovery 5 days bound and rested, 7 with a knee that never quite trusts you again if pushed.·Doctor required

You mostly clear the fall, but the horse's shoulder pins your hip to the ground for one grinding moment. Nothing breaks, but the bruise goes down to the bone itself, the kind of deep hurt that makes its own weather forecasts.

• A bone-deep hip bruise, mounting from that side is off for 4 days
• You rise from every chair in stages, like a foal standing
• The hip aches ahead of rain, accurate as an almanac
• /me braces a hand on the small of their back and levers upright with a groan

Recovery 4 days for the deep ache to loosen, 6 if you keep long days in the saddle.·Doctor required

Your foot stays in the stirrup as the horse rolls, and the whole weight passes over your boot. The leather saves the ankle but the small bones of the foot crunch like dry twigs, two toes and something in the midfoot, the doctor judges by feel.

• Foot bound stiff and shoved in a cut-open boot, heavy limp for 5 days
• No standing in the stirrups and no dancing for 6 days
• Toes splinted to their neighbors, purple past the wrapping

Recovery 5 days bound and mostly off it, 7 hobbling if you must keep working.·Doctor required

The horn catches you across the belly as the horse tips, hard enough to fold you double, but the horse rolls clear before its weight follows. The bruise is ugly and the doctor watchful: he presses your belly in the morning and evening, hunting for the rigidness that would mean bleeding inside.

• A horn-shaped bruise across the stomach, belts and cinched trousers hurt for 4 days
• Doctor's orders: broth and bread only for 2 days while he watches your belly
• Report any hard swelling or fever to the doctor at once, that is not a suggestion
• /me eats their broth slowly, one hand resting flat on a bruised stomach

Recovery 4 days if the belly stays soft, if it goes rigid and hot, this becomes a different story fast.·Doctor required

The horse goes down in soft bottomland mud and pins your leg without breaking it, but it lies there long enough that the leg goes wholly numb. Even after they haul the horse up, your leg is a fencepost of pins and needles that will not answer orders for hours.

• Leg numb then burning with pins and needles for the rest of the day
• A dragging, dead-legged limp, lean on someone or something, 1 day
• Mud to the waist on one side
• /me drags one leg along like it belongs to somebody else

Recovery Feeling returns in hours, full strength in 2 days, rubbing it with liniment hurries nothing but feels like doing something.·Doctor advised

The falling horse scrambles for footing and one flailing hoof rakes down your calf on its way up, a scraping blow, not a strike. It tears trouser and skin in a long raw stripe that bleeds freely and looks far worse than it is.

• A hoof-scrape the length of your calf, bandaged in strips for 3 days
• Boot tops rub it wrong, you ride with one trouser leg loose over the wrap
• A long thin scar to point at in future arguments about horses

Recovery 3 days bandaged and cleaned, 5 and an angrier scar if dirt stays in it.·Doctor advised

As the horse falls left you throw yourself right, and mostly it works, but your shoulder takes the full landing on hard ground. The joint holds; everything around it registers a formal complaint that lasts for days.

• Shoulder too sore to raise past level for 2 days
• Saddling your own horse means asking for help, and you hate it
• /me saddles one-armed, hitching the blanket up with a grimace

Recovery 3 days working the stiffness out; a hot cloth each night helps.·Doctor advised

You wrench your foot from the stirrup as the horse topples, and the twist that saves your leg from the crush spends your ankle to buy it. A fair trade, you tell yourself, hopping in a circle while the horse rolls back up unhurt.

• A swollen ankle, walk, never run, for 2 days
• Wrapped in liniment rags each evening
• Standing in the stirrup on that side stings for 3 days

Recovery 3 days favored and wrapped, 4 if you insist on working pens on foot.·Doctor advised

The saddle itself lands across your thigh with the horse's weight behind it for half a heartbeat before the animal rolls on over. The skirt and stirrup leather print a bruise on your thigh so distinct you can nearly read the maker's stamp in it.

• A saddle-shaped bruise across one thigh, tender for 3 days
• Long rides ache from the second hour onward for 2 days
• /me stands in the stirrups a moment each hour, easing a bruised thigh

Recovery 3 days for the deep colors to fade; you will show people. Everyone does.·Doctor advised

The horse slips in bog-soft ground and comes down with your boot beneath it, but the mud simply swallows your foot out of harm's way. You lie there pinned and perfectly comfortable until the horse stands, then pull your leg out of the earth with a sound like a cork.

• One boot and trouser leg fully mudded to the knee
• A faintly wrenched ankle from the pull-out, sore for 1 day
• /me pulls their leg from the bog with a long wet schlorp and inspects the boot

Recovery A day at most, the mud did the doctoring before it happened.·No doctor needed

You feel the horse going and are already leaving, you shove clear as it falls and take your own tumble a body-length away from the crash. You collect a set of ordinary bruises and one extraordinary memory of the ground where you would have been.

• Assorted bruises down one side, tender for 2 days
• You check the ground for gopher holes obsessively now
• Roll for your horse, partner, it took the fall you dodged

Recovery 2 days of ordinary soreness and you are square.·No doctor needed

The horse rolls up against you as it flounders in the mud, shoving you flat, and you catch yourself on one hand. The wrist complains but holds. You come out from under the commotion filthy, mildly sprained, and abundantly alive.

• A mildly sprained wrist, wrapped in a bandana for 2 days
• Mud in your ear that you will find tomorrow
• /me shakes out a sore wrist, flexing the fingers one by one

Recovery 2 days wrapped and it is forgotten.·No doctor needed

The horse comes down with your leg beneath it, beneath the saddle skirt, as it turns out, not the animal. The leather and blanket pad the whole weight into a firm, insistent pinch. You crawl out with a red pressure-stripe and a new appreciation for good rigging.

• A pressure-stripe bruise along the calf, tender for 1 day
• Your leg fell asleep under there, stamp it awake

Recovery A day of tenderness; the saddle took the rest.·No doctor needed

The stumble telegraphs itself up through the saddle a half-second early, and that half-second is all you need, you are off and standing before the horse finishes going down. It rolls, thrashes upright, and stares at you as if you did it.

• Not a mark on you, you read the fall like a book
• A jolt of spent fear that needs a cigarette or a minute of quiet
• Check your horse over, roll its table if it landed hard

Recovery Nothing to heal. Your reflexes drink free tonight.·No doctor needed

Horse and rider go down together into mud deep enough to lose a wagon in. The fall that should have cracked bones lands like a dropped pillow. The two of you flounder upright in stages, equally filthy, equally unharmed, and equally unwilling to discuss it.

• Head-to-toe mud, inside your boots and down your collar
• Not one bruise between you and the horse
• /me and the horse stand dripping mud, pointedly not looking at each other

Recovery None, the wallow was the whole doctor this town needed.·No doctor needed

The horse rolls fully, terribly, across the spot where you landed, and you feel the whole thousand pounds pass over you and touch nothing, because you dropped square into a grassy buffalo wallow just deep enough to hold a body. You stand up out of the hollow into a circle of witnesses who have already started arguing about what they saw.

• Untouched, a horse rolled over you and the earth itself hid you
• Grass-flattened and wild-eyed, but every bone accounted for
• The hollow gets pointed out to strangers for years, 'right there, I swear it'
• /me rises slowly out of the wallow, patting themselves down in disbelief

Recovery Nothing to heal, go buy the round, you owe the prairie that much.·No doctor needed