Somewhere nearby, in a tree across the field, an owl was calling to him. Some Indians thought that the hoot of an owl outside your window at night was a harbinger of death.But Albert Least-Weasel sat down and did not listen to the owl.

Seventeen-year-old Johnny Least-Weasel knows that his grandfather,Albert, is a stubborn old man and won't stop checking his own trap lines even though other men his age stopped doing so years ago. But Albert Least-Weasel has been running traplines in the Alaskan wil derness alone for the past sixty years. Nothing has ever gone wrong on the trail he knows so well. When Albert doesn't come back from checking his traps one day, and with the temperature steadily plum meting, Johnny must decide quickly whether to trust his grandfather or his own instincts.