Ranger Horn
Emory Horn
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Emory was a ranger on the Longgrass Plains by the time he was fifteen years old. An adventure that went rough got him laid up on Sarsparilla Ranch for several months with a badly broken leg. Emory chafed at the bed confinement. He quickly translated his skills as a ranger into soothing ornery cattle or sheep in the nursery barn, and by the time a doctor cleared him to ride away, 'Ranger' was fully established as a ranch hand.
He also befriended Baldy Ironbender, a seasonal hand who spent the off months running his own smithy shack. Baldy almost never visited a saloon with the rest of the hands -- he spent every copper he could spare on supplies and raw materials for the blacksmith shop of his dreams.
The Sarsparilla hands came back from one cattle drive southwest to Gild'mar only to discover that Sarsparilla Ranch had been bought out by the neighbors at Whippetal Ranch. Big Lui paid each hand what they were owed to date, even included an extra five gold per person for a job well done. Then he dismissed all of them for the rest of the year -- including those hands who had been permanent employees.
(Actually, Big Lui tried to talk Mystery into staying on. She gave him quite the nasty look before she walked off with her Justice. After that, none of the other hands even stuck around to see what would happen next.)
That winter, Ranger and Baldy threw all their money together. They lived in lean-tos or barn lofts wherever they could get work for a few years. They built a reputation for hauling stuck critters safely out of ravines or washes, off high ridges, basically anywhere a fool calf or spooked steer could get itself wedged. They even rode escort on the tax assessor's mail coach a few times.
And then they opened Ore Else.
Ranger says the business name is a particularly crass pun in that Grundel language.
Baldy guffaws. Then he changes the subject.
Ranger and Baldy are the kind of lifelong best friends that show up in cowboy ballads. They still take turns singing one song, trading one lyric after another, to pace their work together.
Employment
One half of Ore Else blacksmithy, where they shoe horses, make and mend the metal components of tackle or gear, make or mend farm implements, churn out a few crates of jar lids every spring or autumn, run off a few sacks of nails when they have a big supply of metal scraps, and make hatband blanks or wire jewelry when they can block off some free time.
Species
Children
Gender
male
Eyes
ale bottle brown
Hair
black, worn in a large number of tight braids that would reach to the bottom of his ribcage if not rolled up to pad his neck
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
darker than charred mesquite and twice as craggy
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