Thigh: Revolver: Straight Through

The ball tore through the inner thigh and the blood comes in pulses, bright and hot, soaking your trouser to the boot. Someone cinches a belt above the wound while your vision grays at the edges, this is a dying wound unless hands and luck both hold through the night.

• Tourniquet above the wound, loosened a notch at a time through one touch-and-go night
• Too weak to stand for 2 days; pale, cold-sweating, drifting in and out
• No riding, fighting or walking beyond a few steps for 7 days
• /me lies gray-faced, trouser leg black with blood, a belt cinched high on the thigh.

Recovery 7 days bedridden under a doctor who never leaves; without one, you bleed out before the hour turns.·Doctor, urgently

The ball missed the great vessel by a whisker but clipped a branch of it, blood wells fast and dark from both holes. The doctor packs the channel and ties off the bleeder with silk while you count ceiling boards and try to stay inside your own head.

• Light-headed from blood loss, no standing without help for a full day
• Leg bandaged hip to knee; crutch only for 5 days
• Skin gone waxy-pale; you shiver even sitting by the stove

Recovery 5 days with the bleeder tied off proper, 7 and a frightening amount of blood without.·Doctor, urgently

Two mouths in your leg and both of them bleeding free, the exit twice the size of the entry where the soft lead spread. You leave a trail of red drops a blind man could track.

• Both wounds packed and wrapped tight; the dressing soaks through twice a day for 3 days
• Crutch for 4 days, the leg folds if you trust weight to it
• /me hitches along on a crutch, one trouser leg cut away over a rust-stained bandage.

Recovery 4 days with a doctor packing both holes, 6 with saloon-rag doctoring.·Doctor required

The ball dragged a plug of dirty trouser wool and powder grains clean through your thigh, and by nightfall both holes are angry, weeping and hot. The doctor flushes the channel with carbolic until you holler the shingles loose.

• Fever the first two nights, sweats, ugly dreams, no appetite
• Wound flushed and repacked daily for 4 days; skipping a day invites gangrene
• Heavy limp for 5 days; no running or hard riding

Recovery 5 days of daily carbolic washes; a week and a gangrene scare if you let it fester.·Doctor required

The entry is a neat purple hole; the exit is a torn flower of meat the size of a silver dollar where the flattened ball came out. It takes silk sutures and a steady hand to fold it closed.

• Exit wound stitched with silk, hard flexing tears them, so 4 days of stiff-legged walking
• Cane or crutch for 3 days
• /me walks stiff and slow, favoring one leg like the ground owes it money.

Recovery 4 days if a doctor stitched the exit, 6 if it was closed with a fish hook and hope.·Doctor required

The ball bored through the full thickness of the quadriceps, both bellies of the muscle, and the whole thigh is one deep black bruise by morning. Lifting the leg to a stirrup is a two-hand job.

• Cannot mount a horse unaided for 3 days
• Thigh swollen tight against the trouser; deep bruising from hip to knee
• No sprinting, jumping or kneeling for 5 days

Recovery 4 days with rest and a doctor's liniment, 6 working through it.·Doctor required

The ball passed close enough to the big nerve to slap it, the leg went out from under you like a dropped rope, and even now it answers slow, all pins-and-needles from knee to boot.

• Leg buckles without warning, walk with a cane or a wall for 3 days
• Numb patches along the shin; you burn yourself on the stirrup iron without feeling it
• No ladders or rooflines for 4 days

Recovery Feeling crawls back over 3 days with rest, 5 if you keep working the leg.·Doctor required

Nothing vital cut, but two holes drained you slow the whole way to the doctor's porch. You're chalk-pale, and the room tilts whenever you stand too fast.

• Dizzy spells on standing for 2 days, sit down before you fall down
• Doctor's orders: beef broth, stout and iron tonic; no exertion for 3 days
• Both wounds bound; limp for 4 days

Recovery 3 days of red meat and rest with a doctor's tonic, 5 on trail food.·Doctor required

Clean through the outside of the thigh, missing bone and the deep vessels both. Two holes, one channel, a mean deep ache, about as kind as a through-shot gets.

• Pronounced limp for 3 days; no running
• Both holes plugged and wrapped; dressing changed daily for 3 days

Recovery 3 days with a proper carbolic wash, 5 without.·Doctor advised

In at the front, out at the side, and the soft lead somehow held its shape. The doctor threads a carbolic-soaked rag clean through the channel, draws it back and forth, and pronounces you a lucky fool.

• Channel cleaned daily with a drawn rag, hurts worse than the shot did, 3 days
• Cane for 3 days; saddle at a walk only
• /me grips the table edge white-knuckled while the doc draws the rag through the wound.

Recovery 3 days doctored, 5 stubborn.·Doctor advised

The channel runs through the inner thigh meat, right where the saddle grips. Every mile at a trot is a hot iron laid against the wound.

• Riding at a walk only for 3 days, a trot opens the stitches
• Waddling, bow-legged gait; anybody watching knows exactly where you were hit
• Wound weeps if the day runs long; change the dressing nightly for 3 days

Recovery 3 days if you stay out of the saddle, 5 if you won't.·Doctor advised

Close-range work: the ball went through the meat and the muzzle flash cooked the entry, a scorched ring of blistered skin around the hole. The channel itself is shallow and honest.

• Burn blisters around the entry weep for 2 days; the dressing sticks something wicked
• Limp for 2 days, tender for 4
• A powder-speckled scar ring any lawman will read as close-quarters work

Recovery 3 days with burn salve and a wash, 4 without.·Doctor advised

The wound itself is simple, but the muscle around it seizes in knots, cramping hard enough to drop you mid-stride whenever cold or effort finds it.

• Sudden charley-horse cramps two or three times a day for 3 days, you stop dead and swear
• No sprinting or climbing for 3 days
• Kneading the thigh in public becomes a habit folk notice

Recovery 3 days with liniment and stretching, 4 on its own.·Doctor advised

In and out through the outer rim of the thigh, more meat than muscle. It bled dramatic and finished quick, and the doctor spends more time on the paperwork than the wound.

• Slight limp for 2 days
• Two stitched holes an inch apart; itches as it knits

Recovery 2 days, doctored or not, just keep it clean.·No doctor needed

The ball tunneled just beneath the hide for a hand's width and popped back out, never touching muscle. There's a raised welt between the holes like a mole run under sod.

• Tender welt across the thigh; sitting cross-legged is off the table for 2 days
• A bragging welt, you can make folk wince just by letting them press it
• /me rolls up the trouser leg to show off a welted tunnel of skin, grinning.

Recovery 2 days, and a story that improves with each telling.·No doctor needed

Fired from too far, the ball was near spent when it found you, it pushed through the first inch of meat and out again with barely enough left to tear the far cloth. Ugly bruise, shallow track.

• Deep stone-bruise ache for 3 days
• Shallow track washed and covered with sticking-plaster; keep it dry for 2 days

Recovery 2 days with a wash and plaster, 3 without.·No doctor needed

It caught the very edge of your thigh, in and out through two inches of meat at the outside. More insult than injury, but it bleeds enough to ruin a good pair of trousers.

• Stings on every stride for 2 days; barely a limp
• Ruined trousers and a neat pair of scars to come

Recovery 2 days, doctored or not.·No doctor needed

The ball passed clean between the great muscles, splitting the seam without cutting either, missing bone and vessel by the grace of whatever watches over fools. The doctor probes the channel twice because he doesn't believe it.

• Stiff for a day, sound by supper the next
• Two small scars and a doctor's baffled head-shake to dine out on

Recovery A day of stiffness, then good as new.·No doctor needed

Straight through the fat pad of the outer thigh without finding a single thing that mattered. It burned like a hornet and bled like a nosebleed, and that's the whole of it.

• A wince when you swing into the saddle, for a day
• Two puckered dots that will pass for a snakebite in dim light

Recovery A day, maybe two if you pick at the scab.·No doctor needed

The ball passed through a pinch of loose skin at a dead run, and you felt it rattle down inside your boot, warm as a stovetop penny. You shake it out, flat as a nickel, and by tonight it's hanging off your watch chain.

• A stinging pinch-mark, two tiny scabs and no limp at all
• One flattened pistol ball, warm from your own leg, proof for the saloon
• /me tips the boot upside down and a flattened pistol ball rings out onto the floorboards.

Recovery By morning you'll have to point at it for anyone to believe you.·No doctor needed