The next morning, when they realize that another dog, Fatty, is gone, they are not too concerned because Fatty was not a very bright dog anyway. However, "no fool dog ought to be fool enough to go off and commit suicide that way." The next night as they are making camp, the same thing happens again. The she-wolf appears and takes half of a salmon from Bill's hand before he recognizes the she-wolf as being a strange dog and can drive it away with a club. Later that night, however, a second dog, Frog, the strongest, is lured away and devoured by the wolf pack. The third night, Bill is determined that they will not lose another dog, and therefore, he contrives a method by which he ties a dog to a stick in such a way that the restraining leather strap cannot be chewed away. The next morning, though, another dog — Spanker — is gone. His strap has been gnawed through. Henry and Bill assume that it was probably the dog next to Spanker, One Ear, that gnawed through the strap. London, however, implies that it was the she-wolf herself who gnawed through the leather strap, releasing Spanker. Bill then decides that he will tie the dogs out of reach of each other that night, because he notes that if it was the wolves who gnawed Spanker loose, they were so hungry that they ate even the leather strap that was tied to Spanker.
At this point, Bill becomes desperately angry over the manner in which the she-wolf is able to lure their dogs away from the camp, and he decides that the only solution is to use one of the three cartridges left; he must at least try to destroy the she-wolf. When they first see the wolf in the daylight, they observe that its coat is a "true wolf coat" — that is, the dominant color is gray, but there is a faint reddish-hue to the coat that indicates that the animal is not a full-blooded wolf. In fact, it looks "for all the world like a big husky sled dog." When Bill raises his rifle to get a good shot at the she-wolf, she immediately notices the weapon and darts for shelter.
When the fourth dog, One Ear, is lured away from the sled by the she-wolf, he and the other two remaining dogs were not, by coincidence, leashed to the sled because of an accident. Bill again decides that he must try to kill the she-wolf.
