Billy and Boyd bring food to an Indigenous man who then asks threatening questions about the family's possessions and home.

Billy's father returns to announce that a she-wolf has appeared on their land, despite wolves being hunted to extinction in the valley.

Billy visits the old hunter Don Arnulfo, who warns him that to catch a wolf is the same as losing it.

Billy finds the she-wolf ensnared in a trap, ties and muzzles her, and decides to return her to the mountains of Mexico.

An American landowner's wife tends to the wolf's injured leg and sends Billy onward with food and supplies.

After Billy carries the wolf across a river, Mexican deputies waiting on the bank confiscate the wolf from him.

Billy walks into the dogfighting ring, unchains the wolf, and declares to the stunned crowd that the wolf is his.

The hacendado's son confronts Billy in the ring, accusing him of trespassing and of endangering Mexicans by bringing a wild wolf.

Billy shoots the wolf dead inside the ring to spare her from the two largest, most vicious dogs waiting to fight her.

Billy returns home to find his parents murdered, the horses stolen, and the house completely abandoned.

Billy retrieves Boyd from a neighbor's home and the two brothers steal supplies and ride into Mexico as self-declared outlaws.

Boyd scares the captors' horses and charges into camp with a shotgun, freeing a captive young woman.

Boyd is shot in the chest during a morning ambush as the brothers flee with the recovered family horses.

Boyd and the girl vanish overnight together, leaving Billy alone without explanation.

Billy witnesses a blinding light on the horizon — the Trinity nuclear weapons test — and weeps alone in the road.

Billy Parham's story begins with a tense encounter with an Indigenous man near his family's ranch and his father's discovery of a lone wolf on their land. After the old hunter Don Arnulfo warns him that catching a wolf means losing it, Billy ignores the warning, captures the pregnant she-wolf, and resolves to return her to the mountains of Mexico. His journey south reveals a world he is entirely unprepared for, as Mexican authorities seize the wolf and subject her to a brutal dogfighting spectacle that Billy cannot stop. His attempts to assert his own justice fail, and he ultimately mercy-kills the wolf to spare her further suffering, shattering his innocence. When he returns home, he finds his parents murdered and joins his brother Boyd on a doomed outlaw quest to recover their stolen horses. The quest ends in violence and abandonment, with Boyd shot, later disappearing with a rescued girl, and Billy left to wander alone until the atomic age announces itself on the horizon.

The wolf, the tragedy, and the long road home

Boyd accidentally destroys his saddle trying to lasso and control a cow that stumbled into one of the wolf traps.

Billy follows the wolf's tracks through fresh snow all day, studying where she hunted and brought down cattle.

Billy sets a trap inside the remains of a vaqueros' campfire and leaves a warning note they likely cannot read.

Billy dismounts and carries the injured wolf across the Rio Bavispe when she struggles to swim the current.

Billy pays to enter a fair tent and finds the wolf chained and being tormented by a young boy.

After shooting the wolf, Billy trades his far more valuable rifle for the right to take her body.

Billy carries the wolf's body into the mountains and buries her alone at dawn.

The caretaker of a ruined church feeds Billy and tells him the story of a heretic who lived under a crumbling dome.

The caretaker reveals himself to be the priest from his own story and urges Billy to return to his family in America.

The local sheriff tells Billy what he believes happened the night the Parham parents were killed and the horses stolen.

In Casas Grandes, Billy and Boyd meet the rancher Gillian, who warns them that the owner of the Hearst estate is powerful and dangerous.

Billy and Boyd lasso three of their horses from a passing herd but are forced at gunpoint to hand them back.

Quijada hears the brothers' story, has his men return the three horses, and provides Billy and Boyd with a written writ of ownership.

The one-armed vaquero returns with armed men to reclaim the horses, but Billy spooks his horse, throwing him and breaking his back.

Billy applies to enlist in the army at offices across New Mexico but is turned away each time for a heart murmur.

Boyd's humiliation over a destroyed saddle sets the brothers' relationship on uneven footing before Billy even catches the wolf, while the wolf herself repeatedly outsmarts every trap set for her. The wolf crossing is filled with small defeats and small mercies — Billy fording a river, watching a fair tent, and ultimately buying back the wolf's body with his only rifle. A ruined church and a wandering caretaker provide the philosophical turning point that sends Billy back toward home, only to find nothing left. As outlaws, Billy and Boyd navigate the bureaucracy and dangers of recovering their horses, meeting allies like Gillian and Quijada alongside enemies like the one-armed vaquero. The physical dangers of the quest reach their peak when the one-armed man's back is broken and Boyd is shot soon after, stranding Billy alone in Mexico. Billy's attempt to fill the void by enlisting in the army fails repeatedly, each rejection deepening his sense of purposelessness in a world that has moved on without him.

The hidden details and secondary beats of Billy's three journeys

Billy, Boyd, and their father ride to a neighboring ranch and collect eight wolf traps from the cabin of the long-missing hunter Echols.

Boyd wakes in the night and tells Billy about his recurring dream of a dry lakebed on fire, insisting something terrible is going to happen.

Billy reaches a crossroads where he could turn north toward home but instead chooses to ride south into the open country of Mexico.

A pregnant girl and an older woman on the road tell Billy the wolf will give birth soon and must not stay muzzled.

Billy confronts the alguacil at a hacienda stable demanding the wolf's return and is dismissed with a coin tossed into the dirt.

Billy wakes in the stable to men with torches leading the wolf through the night toward a crowd gathered for a dogfight.

Watching the two largest dogs being readied to fight the battered wolf, Billy makes the decision to go back inside the ring.

A Mexican villager calls Billy an orphan and warns him he must stop wandering and make a place for himself in the world.

Boyd tells Billy that the men who killed their parents already knew his name before they arrived at the house.

A German doctor in Bacerac surrenders the stolen horse Keno after hearing the brothers' story and rides out to find the thieves himself.

The opera troupe's primadonna warns Billy that his prolonged pursuit of the horses will put too much strain on his relationship with Boyd.

Billy reluctantly agrees to let the girl ride one of their horses to her home in Namiquipa, planning to reunite in a few days.

Billy stops at the home of a blind Mexican Revolutionary veteran who tells how an enemy sucked out his eyes rather than execute him.

A woman in a hotel sings a corrido about a young blond man and his lover dying in each other's arms when their ammunition runs out.

Nomadic muleteers discover Billy on the road, treat Niño's stab wound, and their leader tells the story of a father's crashed airplane.

Boyd's prophetic dream of a burning lakebed introduces the novel's deep sense of foreboding before a single trap is set, and the family's trip to collect Echols's traps sets the wolf hunt in motion. Billy's decision at the crossroads to ride south rather than turn back home is the original act of defiance that places his entire life on a tragic trajectory. Each stage of his journey is marked by a figure trying to warn or redirect him — women on the road urging him to unmuzzle the wolf, the alguacil dismissing him with a coin, and the primadonna predicting his estrangement from Boyd. After losing his family, Billy pieces together the truth through small revelations — Boyd's claim that the killers knew their name, a German doctor's unexpected generosity, and a stranger's corrido about the güerito dying in his lover's arms. The wandering muleteers who save Niño and their leader's meditation on the crashed airplane represent the novel's final reckoning with fate and the meaning of stories. Together, these turning points chart Billy's transformation from a naïve boy with a righteous mission into a grieving man who can no longer make sense of the world around him.