If you don't care about staining the nuclei, then you can skip the Weigert's Htx step, and the tap water rinse afterward. The other steps are all necessary to tell the collagen from the other tissues.

There is a protocol in Vacca's Laboratory Manual of Histochemistry that reduces Masson to only phosphomolybdic acid and anilin.

In short, it's same as normal Masson but staining with acid fuchsin is skipped.

I've been using it to stain rat femur sections and works really well in my case. Bone stains deep blue, cartilage and bone marrow pale blue.