Horse Kick: Head & Face

The hoof catches you flush on the skull with the full swing behind it, the blow that has buried more stable hands than any gunfight. They find you crumpled against the stall boards. The doctor traces the depression in the bone with two fingers and says, quietly, that there is nothing to do but keep you still and see if you wake.

• Unconscious, waking is a question, not a schedule
• If you wake: words come out wrong and one hand won't fully obey for 5 days
• Head swathed in bandages, changed daily; no hat fits over them
• /me lies in the straw where they fell, hat crushed beside them

Recovery A week abed under the doctor's watch if you wake, many kicked like this never do.·Doctor, urgently

The hoof takes you across the jaw and the bone breaks in two places with a sound you hear from the inside. The doctor binds your jaw closed with a Barton bandage wound under the chin and over the crown, and hands you a reed straw, every meal you take for a good while will come through it.

• Jaw bound shut, you speak in grunts and through clenched teeth for 7 days
• Broth, milk, and whiskey through a straw; chewing is a memory
• The bandage wrap makes you look half-mummified, and children stare
• /me sips supper through a reed straw, eyes full of resentment

Recovery 7 days bound with the doctor adjusting the wrap, unbound, the jaw knits crooked and clicks with every bite forever.·Doctor required

The kick crushes your cheekbone and the eye socket above it, and two teeth besides, the dentist's answer in 1899 is the pliers, and he uses them. That side of your face swells until the eye is a gleam in a purple fist, and the doctor cannot promise how well it will see when it opens.

• One eye swollen entirely shut, no depth to your vision for 4 days
• That side of your face is one great bruise; smiling splits your lip against the gap
• A gap in your teeth and a flattened place on the cheekbone as souvenirs
• /me turns their whole head to look at things, one eye buried in swelling

Recovery 7 days for the swelling and socket with a doctor's care, the eye usually comes back; the teeth do not.·Doctor required

A glancing hoof to the temple drops you like a sack of oats, and you stay down long enough to frighten everyone in the yard. You wake to lamplight and the doctor counting your pupils, missing an hour and holding a headache with weather of its own.

• Knocked cold for long minutes, the missing hour is gone for good
• Vomiting spells and a sideways stagger for 2 days
• No riding, climbing, or shooting for 4 days by doctor's order
• Bright light drives a nail behind your eyes for 3 days

Recovery 5 days of dark rooms and doctor's visits, 7 of dizzy misery without.·Doctor required

The edge of the hoof catches your nose square and flattens it with a crunch like stepped-on kindling. Blood pours down your shirt in a sheet. The doctor grips it with both thumbs and pulls it straight while two men hold your shoulders, and you learn some brand-new words.

• Nose splinted with plaster strips, breathe through your mouth for 4 days
• Two magnificent black eyes blooming by morning
• You cannot smell smoke, supper, or trouble for 3 days
• /me breathes audibly through their mouth, nose buried under plaster tape

Recovery 5 days splinted if set quick, unset, it heals with a permanent westward lean.·Doctor required

A grazing blow splits your ear nearly in two and boxes the hearing out of that side. The doctor stitches the halves back together with fine silk while you grip the chair, and for days the world comes at you through one good ear and a ringing you could set a clock by.

• Ear stitched and bandaged flat to your skull for 5 days
• Half deaf on that side, you turn your good ear to conversations
• A constant ringing that peaks in quiet rooms for 3 days
• /me cocks their head, aiming their good ear at whoever's talking

Recovery 5 days stitched with the hearing seeping back, untreated, the ear heals in two mismatched pieces.·Doctor required

The hoof's edge opens your cheek from cheekbone to jaw, a clean deep slice that shows more of you than anyone cares to see. The doctor flushes it with carbolic and closes it with a neat row of silk, a scar in the making that will do half your talking for you.

• A stitched line down one cheek, no wide grins or hard chewing for 4 days
• Keep the stitches dry and clean; shaving that side waits a week
• A duelist's scar, unearned but impressive, once healed

Recovery 5 days for the silk to come out clean, 7 and a rope-thick scar if it festers.·Doctor required

The blow clips your crown and pours your legs out from under you. You are down and blank for a full minute, long enough for someone to fetch water and dash it in your face. You come around soaked, confused, and asking the same question twice.

• A pounding headache and cotton-wool thinking for 2 days
• You repeat yourself now and again for a day, folk will point it out
• No fast riding or ladder work for 3 days
• /me blinks water out of their eyes, asking again what happened

Recovery 3 days of quiet with a doctor's look-over, 5 foggy ones without.·Doctor required

A partial connection paints you with a black eye that belongs on a circus poster and splits your brow above it for good measure. Everyone you meet for a week will ask about the other fellow, and the truth, a horse, at feeding time, improves nobody's opinion of you.

• A world-class black eye, swollen half shut for 2 days, purple for 5
• A split brow crusted under a sticking-plaster
• /me touches their spectacular black eye and immediately regrets it

Recovery 5 days for the colors to run their course; a beefsteak on it is folk medicine, but it is something to do.·Doctor advised

The hoof grazes your mouth and smashes your lip against your own teeth, splitting it fat and rocking one tooth loose in its socket. You spend the evening pressing the tooth gently with your tongue and telling yourself it is firming up.

• A fat split lip, whistling and hot coffee are out for 3 days
• One loose tooth to fret over; chew on the other side for 4 days
• Blood-crusted mouth that startles folk until you wash

Recovery 4 days for the lip; the tooth settles in a week if you leave it be.·Doctor advised

The flat of the hoof claps across your ear like a swung plank. No blood, but the ringing is immediate and total, and your balance keeps deferring to a horizon that is not quite where it says it is.

• Half deaf and ringing on one side for 2 days
• A drunkard's wobble when you turn fast, hold rails and horns
• /me shakes their head hard, hand cupped over one ringing ear

Recovery 2 days for the ring to fade, 3 for the ground to level back out.·Doctor advised

The kick catches the corner of your jaw at half strength, bruised deep, not broken, the doctor judges after wiggling it in a manner you did not enjoy. Every bite for days must be worth the effort it costs.

• A bruised jaw hinge, soft food and short sentences for 3 days
• An egg-sized lump along the jawline, tender to shaving
• Yawning ambushes you with pain every single time

Recovery 3 days of soup and civility, 5 if you keep arguing at length.·Doctor advised

You catch the hoof's follow-through high on the forehead, and by evening you are wearing a knot the size of a goose egg dead center above your brows. Your hat perches on it at an angle that invites comment, and comment arrives.

• A prominent forehead lump for 3 days, your hat sits crooked on it
• A steady frontal headache the first day
• /me resettles their hat around the lump for the tenth time today

Recovery 3 days for the egg to go down; cold creek water pressed to it helps.·Doctor advised

The hoof skims your temple close enough to burn, a raw red scrape from cheekbone to hairline, and the sound of it passing is a thing you will hear again some nights. An inch truer and this would be a very different table.

• A raw scrape along the temple, scabbing for 2 days
• You flinch when anything moves fast on that side, for 1 day

Recovery 2 days of scab and sting, then just the memory.·No doctor needed

The kick takes you high on the crown, but your hat's stiff felt and the angle rob it of nearly everything. Your head rings a moment; the hat is holed clean through the brim and crown both, and you will never throw it away now.

• A mild headache the rest of the day
• A hoof-holed hat with a story bigger than the hurt
• /me pokes a finger through the hole in their hat and whistles low

Recovery The headache is gone by morning; the hat is beyond mortal repair.·No doctor needed

The hoof's rim catches the point of your chin as you jerk back, a shallow nick and a jaw-clack that makes you bite air. You bleed just enough to look interesting and check your teeth twice with your tongue before trusting them.

• A nicked chin under a small plaster for 2 days
• A bitten-down feeling in the teeth for an hour or so

Recovery 2 days for the nick to close; a small pale scar dresses up your chin after.·No doctor needed

You feel the wind of the hoof across your scalp and a hot line where its edge touched, a graze that parts your hair a new way and bloodies your comb for a few days, and that is the whole of the bill.

• A tender scrape-line across the scalp for 2 days
• Your hat presses on it just wrong, wear it tipped back
• /me gingerly explores a new part in their hair with one finger

Recovery 2 days of tenderness; your hair covers the evidence.·No doctor needed

The hoof passes so close to your face that it fans your mustache, and touches nothing. The horse's leg is back under it grazing hay before your heart has finished falling into your boots. You stand very still for a while afterward.

• Untouched, but shaken, your hands need a minute before fine work
• A healthy new habit of speaking to horses before walking behind them

Recovery Nothing to heal, just a memory that visits at odd hours.·No doctor needed

The kick connects with nothing but your hat, lifting it clean off your head and sending it spinning over the corral rail. There is a horseshoe-shaped dent in the crown that no amount of steaming will ever fully lift, and not a mark on you.

• Wholly unhurt, the hat absorbed your entire misfortune
• A dented hat crown you refuse to fix on principle
• /me retrieves their hat from over the fence, punching the dent out as they walk

Recovery None required. The hat's convalescence is ongoing.·No doctor needed

You bend at that exact heartbeat to pick up the shoe you dropped, and the kick scythes through the air where your skull was, mane-high and murderous. You straighten up holding the horseshoe, having heard death whistle past your part, and the whole yard swears you ducked it on purpose. Luckiest iron in the territory, and it is going over your door.

• Untouched by the deadliest kick anyone present ever saw
• The horseshoe you were holding is now certified lucky, nail it up
• Witnesses will retell this with the kick getting closer every round
• /me straightens up, horseshoe in hand, unaware they were nearly a headline

Recovery Nothing to heal, hang the shoe points-up so the luck stays in.·No doctor needed