Johnny D. Boggs examines the disastrous winter of 1886-87 in this critically acclaimed novel of the West. Jim Hawkins hardly said a word to anybody, but that all changed in the spring of 1920 when Hawkins took his young grandson, Henry Lancaster, along on a scouting trip. Scouting for memories. The man who rarely talked tells his grandson how he came to Montana from Texas as a young teen-ager with his pards Tommy O'Hallahan and John Henry Kenton, cowboys looking for country free of barbed wire, and how the winter of 1886-87 changed his life. This is a powerful character study, aimed for younger and older readers, richly detailed, with emotions as raw as the brutal winter winds.