The Innkeeper

Chapter 3

The next morning Samuel was up before dawn, not an unusual occurrence. Keeping busy was his motto. It left less time to think of Isabella, and dreams didn't always end well. It also left him too busy to wonder about the Ranger.

The Ranger nor the bandits were to be seen in the tavern, and the tables looked sparkling, all the chairs tucked nicely in. If Rangers were that attentive to detail, perhaps he ought to hire one to clean, he mused. Even outside there was no sign of a scuffle.

The lack of evidence of the late night encounter had him wondering if it was simply a very vivid dream. Then he pushed it to the back of his mind and got his priorities in order. His first task of the day was to properly muck out the stables now that there was a guest in them. She was the Ranger's, a shaggy chestnut with a white stripe down her forehead. What went in must come out, and she had had all night access to the leftover grains from the previous visitor.

"Hallo there," he said to the mare. She stared back at him and tilted her head. "I'm going to need to get you out of the stall."

He tried pulling the horse on a lead but she refused to budge. Damn those Ranger horses, they were loyal. "I'm not trying to steal you."

He rubbed his eyes and blamed lack of sleep when the horse seemed to respond in a teasing voice, But how do I know for sure?

"All right. You don't want to move? I'll just have to convince you. How does a wide open field sound? Good right?" he added when the horse's ears seemed to perk up at the idea, although it was most likely his imagination. "Oh yeah, lots of green grass, you just have to step a little bit forward."

Samuel tried to drag the mare out again with no luck. "Oh, you stubborn little－I'm sure I'm allowed to move you a few meters."

The horse looked at him with amusement, he was sure of it. He was being played and that didn't suit his mood. Samuel was not a morning person today and he decided to stop this before it started.

"Fine, you're one of those horses that only moves when you're ridden. That's fine, just fine."

The horse snorted but allowed him to walk alongside her and prepare to mount without a saddle. As he bent his legs to provide more of a boost she turned her head and looked at him.

"Let's go for a ride," he said, unaware he had just exploited the one weakness of code words. 

Often with enough luck a person could stumble upon the right phrase. It was very rare because usually the only people bold enough to steal a Ranger horse were thieves, and thieves didn't care much for the horse's opinion on the matter of being stolen. A lot of bandits had failed at taking a Ranger horse, and unbeknownst to most people there was word through the thief grapevine to never bother trying. However, if it was not known that the horse was a Ranger's, then it was still up for grabs. That is, until it refused to move or bucked a rider off. By then they knew it was useless.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately in this case, the grapevine did not extend to honest innkeepers.

Samuel hauled himself on the horse and rode her bareback to another stall. He slipped off and patted her neck, noticing how cared for she was. He hoped he wasn't expected to be that thorough. He didn't even have a brush to get Juniper's coat so shiny. Feeling a little self-conscious he slipped into Juniper's stall and gave him a quick rub down with some clean straw.

His horse somewhat more presentable, he finally got to mucking the stalls and finished before the sun rose. On the way back to the original stall the chestnut mare was much more cooperative.