Horse Shot

The ball takes your horse through the chest and it goes down mid-stride, throwing you clear. Blood froths pink at its nostrils and its great heart is racing itself to a stop, unless a reviver reaches it inside the next few breaths, this is where you say goodbye.

• Your saddle and gear must be stripped from where it fell, carry it or cache it
• You are afoot until you find another mount
• /me kneels at the horse's head, hat off, saying nothing

Recovery None to speak of, a reviver in the first minute or a grave. Grief keeps its own clock.·Doctor, urgently

The ball punched through behind the ribs and the wound weeps dark. Every horseman knows what a gut wound means in 1899, the vet can dose laudanum and pray, but the odds are long and the night will be longer.

• Your horse stands with its head hung low, refusing all feed
• Stay within sight of your horse for the next 24 hours, the vigil is yours
• /me presses an ear to the horse's flank, listening for gut sounds that aren't there

Recovery If it lives out 3 days it will live, 7 gaunt days to trail-sound either way. Untreated, dawn decides.·Doctor, urgently

The ball caught high in the chest and missed the heart by a hand span, but your horse's breath comes with a wet whistle. The vet plugs and dresses the hole with carbolic-soaked lint; now it is a race between healing and pneumonia.

• Walk only, no trot, no gallop, for 5 days
• A rattling wheeze whenever the horse exerts itself
• Blanket the horse at night and keep it out of rain for 5 days

Recovery 6 days under a vet's care with the whistle fading daily, untreated, the wet cough becomes fever by day 3.·Doctor, urgently

The ball drove deep into the shoulder and flattened against bone. The vet probes for a hard quarter hour with the horse trembling in a twitch before the forceps come out with the misshapen lead, the muscle is ruined for now, but the bone held.

• Your horse is dead lame in the near fore, lead it at a walk for 4 days
• No rider's weight for 3 days
• /me holds the twitch steady, murmuring to the horse while the vet probes
• Keep the flattened bullet, a trophy for the mantel

Recovery 7 days of stall rest and carbolic dressings, skip the probing and the lead poisons the wound inside 2.·Doctor, urgently

Through-and-through across the big muscle of the haunch, bleeding freely from both holes. It looks like murder and bleeds like it too, but muscle heals, carbolic wash, silk sutures at entry and exit, and a bran poultice do the rest.

• Your horse drags the off hind slightly at any pace above a walk for 4 days
• Change the poultice morning and night for 3 days
• Two puckered scars where the hair will grow back white

Recovery 4 days with sutures and clean dressings, 6 if you only pour whiskey in it, watch for heat and swelling either way.·Doctor required

The ball buried itself in the thick crest of the neck. The vet cuts it free without much trouble, but the wound sits where the muscle works every time the head dips, your horse cannot graze low without tearing at the stitches.

• Hang a feed bag or hold feed at chest height for 4 days, no low grazing
• The horse carries its head stiff and high, like it's been insulted
• /me feeds the horse from cupped hands, holding them up high

Recovery 4 days sutured and hand-fed, 6 rough ones if it must graze off the ground and keep tearing the wound.·Doctor required

A ball in the shoulder muscle, not deep, but it carried cloth from the saddle blanket in with it. The vet extracts lead and wool both, swabs the track with carbolic, and tells you plain: the wound will tell you within 3 days whether it means to fester.

• Check the wound for heat, swelling, and stink twice a day for 3 days
• Your horse flinches from anything touching its left shoulder
• No saddle for 2 days, ride bareback or walk

Recovery 5 days if the track stays clean, but if fever comes by day 3 you're lancing an abscess and starting over.·Doctor required

The ball plowed a furrow along the ribs, laying open hide and a finger's depth of muscle for the length of your forearm. It bleeds spectacular but shallow, a long line of silk sutures closes it, and the girth will sit right across the middle of it.

• Cinch the girth loose and check for rubbed stitches at every stop for 4 days
• A dramatic forearm-long scar along the ribs

Recovery 4 days sutured, 6 open and crusted, either way it itches and the horse will try to roll on it.·Doctor required

A neat hole in, a neat hole out, high through the muscle of the haunch, missing everything that matters. The vet barely needs to do more than run a carbolic-soaked seton through the track and call it honest work.

• A hitch in the hind stride for 3 days, walk and trot only
• Two coin-sized scars, entry and exit, to show off at the hitching post

Recovery 3 days with clean dressings, 5 if you leave it to weep on its own.·Doctor advised

You can see the ball, a dark lump riding just under the hide of the shoulder, spent by distance before it ever reached your horse. The vet nicks the skin with a lancet and flicks it out like a splinter, and the horse barely stamps.

• A single stitch and a bruise the size of a dinner plate under the hair
• Mount from the off side for 2 days, the near shoulder is tender
• Pocket the spent ball for a watch-chain fob

Recovery 2 days of a sore shoulder with treatment, 4 without, the bruise outlasts the cut.·Doctor advised

The ball smashed through the cantle of your saddle before it reached the horse, arriving with barely enough push to break the hide over the loin. The saddle is wrecked; the horse mostly took a vicious deep bruise.

• Your saddle needs a saddler's repair or replacing, ride bareback or borrow
• No weight on the loins for 2 days, lead or ride light and forward
• The horse dips its back and pins its ears when brushed over the bruise

Recovery 3 days for the bruise to stop mattering, treated with liniment, 5 days of cold-backed misery without.·Doctor advised

The ball parted the mane and creased the crest of the neck, a shallow burn of a wound that bled down both sides and scared the horse half to death. The flesh will heal quick, the nerves will take longer.

• Your horse flinches hard at gunfire for 5 days, dismount or hold tight before you shoot
• A part in the mane that grows back white over the scar
• /me steadies the trembling horse, a hand flat on its neck

Recovery 3 days for the crease under a daily carbolic wipe, 4 untreated, the gun-shyness runs its own schedule.·Doctor advised

A graze plowed a shallow furrow across the horse's forearm, more burn than hole. It stiffens as it scabs, and every stride cracks the crust open again until it knits.

• A halting, stiff-legged gait for the first minutes of every ride, 3 days
• Wrap the forearm before riding and unwrap it at night for 3 days

Recovery 3 days wrapped and salved, 4 cracking and weeping if you ride it bare.·Doctor advised

The ball took hair and the top layer of hide off the haunch in a stripe you could lay a pencil in. It bled just enough to look dramatic in front of witnesses and no more.

• A pencil-stripe scab across the haunch for a few days
• The horse is jumpy about hands coming toward its hindquarters for 2 days

Recovery 2 days to scab, 3 to shed the scab, nothing a tin of ointment can't manage.·No doctor needed

A hot line across the neck where the ball kissed and kept going. The welt rises within the hour, hairless and tender, and your horse will act mortally insulted every time the rein brushes it.

• Rein carefully off that side for 2 days
• A raised hairless welt on the neck that draws questions at the hitch rail

Recovery 2 days tender, treated with a dab of salve, 3 untreated.·No doctor needed

The very tip of an ear is simply gone, snipped off clean as if by a tailor. It bled like fury for ten minutes, and now your horse has the rakish, notch-eared look of an outlaw's mount.

• A notched ear tip, a story trophy on par with any scar
• The horse headshakes and flicks that ear for 2 days

Recovery 2 days of head-shaking, then done, no treatment worth the name.·No doctor needed

The graze is barely a scuff on the hip, but the bolt afterward was the real event, a flat-out panic through brush that left scratches on its legs and you hauling leather to stay aboard.

• Fine scratches on the legs to pick clean of thorns
• Your horse spooks at sudden noises for 2 days

Recovery A day or two for the scratches, the nerves settle when yours do.·No doctor needed

The ball snapped the off rein clean in two a hand's width from the bit, stung the cheekpiece, and never broke horse hide. You rode the fight one-reined and cursing, and your horse has a small rub where leather slapped it.

• Splice or replace a rein before serious riding
• A leather-slap rub mark on the cheek, gone in a day

Recovery The horse needs none, the bridle needs a saddler or ten minutes with an awl.·No doctor needed

You find the hole that evening, through the bedroll, through your spare shirt, and flattened against the coffee pot lashed behind the cantle. Your horse never even knew, but it stands there accepting your fussing like royalty.

• A hole in the bedroll and a dented coffee pot for show-and-tell
• One spare shirt, deceased

Recovery None needed, the coffee pot may never recover its looks.·No doctor needed

The ball strikes the saddle horn dead center and sings off into the sky, splitting the leather cap and leaving lead smeared bright across the steel. An inch of drift in any direction and it was your horse's spine or your own belly, the whole camp goes quiet when you show them.

• A lead-smeared saddle horn no one will believe until they touch it
• Your horse is entirely unharmed and mildly annoyed at the fuss
• /me thumbs the bright lead smear on the saddle horn, shaking their head slow

Recovery Nothing to heal, the story pours drinks for a month.·No doctor needed