Parham’s mission to return the captured she-wolf to Mexico is abjectly flawed . . . [it is] nothing more than a man violently controlling a wild animal through the guise of pseudo-nobility” (143). Raymond Malewitz argues that the wolf's "literary agency" becomes visible when Billy's way of thinking about the wolf conflicts with the way the narrator describes the creature. Along the way, Billy encounters many other travelers and inhabitants of the land who relate in a sophisticated dialogue their deepest philosophies. Take, for example, a Mormon who converts to Catholicism and describes his vision of reality in this way: Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place. And that is what was to be found here. The corrido. The tale. And like all corridos it ultimately told one story only, for there is only one to tell. He also meets an opera troupe performing Pagliacci in the wilds, the characters of which curiously parallel Billy and Boyd's relationship with a girl they save along their route. He watched the play with interest but could make little of it ... in the end the man in buffoon's motley slew the woman and slew another man perhaps his rival with a dagger In the second border crossing, Billy and Boyd have set out to recover horses stolen from their family's spread. Their relationship is a strained one, with Boyd displaying a more stubborn nature than that of his brother, a characteristic that hinders Billy's attempts to protect him. Boyd is eventually shot through the chest in a squabble. After he is nursed back to health, he disappears with a young girl. The third crossing features Billy alone attempting to discover his brother's whereabouts. He learns Boyd has been killed in a gunfight and sets out to find his dead brother's remains, and return them to New Mexico. After finding Boyd's grave and exhuming the body, Billy is ambushed by a band of men who desecrate Boyd's remains and stab Billy's horse through the chest. Billy, with the help of a gypsy, nurses the horse back to riding condition. The last scene shows