While Chaska gave Deyun two more measured swallows from the tin cup, Ysabet leaned across his knees and examined the pinned right leg with her good left hand.
The heavy ironwood root had come down across the lower third of the shin, just where the thick leather top of his trapping boot doubled over the ankle lacing. By pure luck, a flat slab of limestone underneath his calf had taken part of the weight, leaving a three-inch gap that had kept the wood from crushing the bone flat.
Ysabet did not slit the boot leather yet; when a limb has been compressed for days in cold dirt, cutting the support away before the weight is lifted only lets the tissue swell until the skin splits. Instead, she slid her left forefinger inside the wool stocking at the top of the boot to check the alignment of the shin-ridge, then pinched the cold skin above his heel to see how quickly the blood color came back.
“The main bone isn’t sheared through,” Ysabet said plainly, sitting back on her heels so he could see her face. “It’s cracked or badly bruised along the outer splint-bone, and the muscle’s been pinched cold for six days. You won’t stand on it for a month, and when the blood comes back into your foot tonight it’s going to hurt worse than it does right now.”
