Jason Beard has left college to come back home to Midbury after his father died.He is working as a deputy once again for Sheriff Chick Charleston. The story begins in what people in that neck of the woods call a cold snap, the temperature is about 45 degrees below zero. The people in the town are up in arms about the new hard hats and their families that are coming to town preparing for the passage of a law that will give permission for widespread coal strip mining.

If this happens the land will be destroyed for years and will never be good for ranching or farming again, The incomers are just hoping for jobs which will support their families and resent the way that are being treated like lepers from the town folk. It is only the bitter cold that takes the edge off the hostilities. But not for long, soon there is the death of a newcomer who owns a bar and the sounds of wolves are heard coming ever closer to town and the people on both sides of the mining question fear for the safety of their children.

This is an intriguing story written in the eighties and it is interesting to compare the background of the story with the situation of coal mining in Montana today. The sense of time and place is wonderful and I shivered in my boots until the very satisfying conclusion. This rates as one of my favorite series. ( )