Redhawk Caldera I will fight you for eternity.

After visiting the lake again, he decided to see what actually happened to Colt.  Surely enough time had passed that if he had joined up with the pack he'd mentioned he'd be reasonably well established, right?  Eh, knowing his luck the guy dawdled and had only joined yesterday.  Or maybe not at all.  All he knew right now as that Bramblepoint seemed uncrossable unless you followed the game trails (he wasn't fond of being a pincushion) and that as he attempted to find a trace of scent along the way, too much snow had fallen and melted away and fallen again to stay for it to be at all reasonable for Quixote to follow it exactly.  Every once and a while he thought he caught a breath of a clue, but then it was gone.  He was playing it by ear, making a best guess for where Colt would have gone when heading this direction.  If any other land was in the way other than this giant land of spikes, Quixote would have felt less sure that he was following exactly.  With limited movement? Yeah, this seemed like a highway.

Eventually the brambles ended and the mountain was up before him.  The density of wolf smells was a lot thicker here, but he was going to have to move closer, wasn't he? From a distance, he was learning nothing.  Quixote sighed.  Really, he didn't want to get much closer in case he gave the wrong idea -- he still had a few more things to investigate before he made a choice of pack on his end -- but it seemed like the only option.  Get in, get out, come back later if it seemed like the right choice.  Simple plan, easily fouled.

He'd paused for a moment, but as Quixote moved forward that final bit to where things were clearly marked his whole body morphed from the confident loner to a submissive and cautious one.  His luck had held reasonably well thus far, and he wasn't going to count on it to continue.  Slinking along low and flat was the best way he'd come out in one piece when his investigations were done, weren't they?  Though he made sure not to cross the invisible fence he was certainly up near it as his nose swept the ground looking for the right scent among many at a point of the borders that seemed to him like a natural door.  Where was it?  He was coiled like a spring, ready to bolt in case someone came after him, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that.  Ugh.  Really, where was it?  Had Quixote guessed wrong and Colt had gone to a different part of the borders?  Was he not even here?

And if the wolf walking the borders hadn't actually seen his final approach, she certainly would smell him -- the wind was carrying just the right way.  He'd remain clueless a lot longer than she would.