In frigid Montana, a boy tracks a killer wolf and learns to be a man It is the worst winter anyone in Montana can remember. If the cold doesn't let up soon, the Brue family farm may be done for good—and the Brues along with it. Young Nashua Brue is shivering over his breakfast one morning when his father announces that Nash will be taking the week off school. A great wolf has been savaging the local cattle, and the cattlemen's association has offered a $500 reward for the beast's head. Nash and his father will risk death to get that prize, for their lives depend on it. Father and son saddle up and ride into the frozen countryside with an eccentric gang of hunters. But as they track the majestic animal, Nash begins to doubt their mission. Who is the real villain of the prairie—the men compelled by greed to kill, or the wolf that, like Nash's family, simply does whatever it takes to survive?