A stunning survival story of a 14-year-old boy tending sheep in the Wyoming mountains by three-time Newbery Honor Award-winner Gary Paulsen. "The action is nonstop . . . will have readers lunging over each cliffhanger into the next crisis until they finish the book".--The Bulletin (recommended). ALA Best Book for Young Adults; American Bookseller "Pick of the Lists; " Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award.
Fourteen-year-old John Barron is asked, like his father and grandfather before him, to spend the summer taking care of their sheep in the haymeadow. Six thousand sheep. John will be alone, except for two horses, four dogs, and all those sheep.

John doesn't feel up to the task, but he hopes that if he can accomplish it, he will finally please his father. But John finds that the adage "things just to sheep" is true when the river floods, coyotes attack, and one dog's feet get cut. Through it all he must rely on his own resourcefulness, ingenuity, and talents to survive this summer in the haymeadow.