Rancher Ferrets on the Range: The Ferret Chronicles

Chapter One

"I never saw a ranchpaw ever wore a blue hat..."

She was just a kit, and truth to tell so was he, when he taught the silver-fur Cheyenne Jasmine Ferret to ride delphins.

She adjusted the sky-color brim lower over her eyes, hint of a smile. "I'm not a ranchpaw, Montgomery Ferret, and it'll do you well to remember that. You teach me everything you know, please, and leave my hat out of it!"

They lived near the end of the river road, their parents' ranches side by side, sheltered from the west by the lofty Sweetroot Mountains, from the north and east by wide Montana wilderness. Before school and after, before chores and after, they rode together.

Now Monty Ferret sat relaxed upon Boffin, his gray delphin, paws crossed easily atop the animal's mane, and watched his lovely friend. "When you're asking her to jump, you want to get your weight back, Cheye, you want to shift your weight off your front paws, let Starlet get her head up to jump."

"She doesn't want to jump, Monty." Cheyenne cantered the delphin to her friend, slowed to a walk close by, a tight circle around the unruffled Boffin. "I move back and she still doesn't want to jump. She stops."

"So what do you think is wrong?"

"She doesn't want to jump."

"If that doesn't beat everything," said her instructor. "She wants to jump when I ride her. Why is that, do you suppose?"

"She likes you. All the delphins like you." The kit burst with frustration. "She doesn't want to jump because I'm not you!"

"Now you're stubborn again, and that's likely not going to be much help," said Monty, a picture of calm. "So let me ask again. What's she thinking? Ever you find an animal does something you don't understand, ask yourself: What's it thinking?"

Contrite, determined to learn: "How?"

"Go into her mind! Pretend you're Starlet right now. Now you're coming round the turn, you see the fence, you're thinking I want to jump, for Cheyenne! Why don't you do it?"

A long silence, his student nearly in a trance, imagining. "I can't jump."

"Good. Why can't you jump?"

The kit considered, her mind in the delphin's, all at once realizing. "I'm not running fast enough! Cheyenne's holding me back!"

Her teacher smiled. "Now that's interesting, isn't it? Do you think that's true? Are you going to try that jump again?"

Her fur a radiant fall of light, her head low over the delphin's mane, pastel hat barely showing above Starlet's ears, Cheyenne wheeled without a word, urged her mount topspeed around the turn toward the jump. Drumbeat hooves pounded from the earth, echoed from stone-canyon walls. Sand kicked into the air behind the two, pebbles flying.

Monty watched. "Go, Cheye," he murmured.

The silver kit lifted her weight, whispered to her delphin, "Fly!"

A flick of Starlet's tail, the two launched into silence, slow-motion airborne on the wind, no hoofbeats for a long pause, the low fence rail blurring beneath them.

Then ground thudded and trembled, the echoes again, Starlet swerving at the touch of Cheyenne's paw, cutting a half-circle to stop, breathing hard, by Monty and Boffin.

The kit's eyes sparkled. "It works!"

Her burly little trainer nodded.

"What did I do?" She was breathless with excitement and victory.

He said nothing. Tilted his head, listened.