At the start of the novel, there aren’t any known wolves on the Parham land—Echols and other hunters have eradicated them. The she-wolf’s arrival signals the intrusion of the natural, chaotic world into the story. The wolf exists outside of the rules of man, and Billy’s attempts to tame it represent his fatal misunderstanding about his own relationship to chaos and violence, which lurks just beneath the surface of his life as a teenager on land that is in transition from the frontier.

The novel portrays tension between the wolf’s own desire to be free and Billy’s mission, which for him symbolizes restorative justice for the regal order of the natural world. Though the wolf and Billy do form a wary bond, she only submits to his care with no other option, and the danger she represents remains a key reality in their companionship. Billy, however, invests more meaning into her—after she is taken from him, he speaks to her in English while she’s in captivity: “he said what was in his heart. He made her promises that he swore to keep in the making. That he would take her to the mountains where she would find others of her kind” (105).