And even when Noel
found a track, a light oval track, larger but more slender than a dog's,
in some moist sand close beside their own footprints and evidently
following them, they remembered only the young wolf that had followed
Tomah and pressed on the more eagerly.
Day after day they returned to their watch-tower on the flat rock, under
the dwarf spruce at the head of the brook, and lying there side by side
they watched the play of the young wolf cubs. Every day they grew more
interested as the spirit of play entered into themselves, understanding
the gladness of the wild rough-and-tumble when one of the cubs lay in
wait for another and leaped upon him from ambush; understanding also
something of the feeling of the gaunt old she-wolf as she looked down
gravely from her gray rock watching her growing youngsters. Once they
brought an old spyglass which they had borrowed from a fisherman, and
through its sea-dimmed lenses they made out that one of the cubs was
larger than the other two, with a droop at the tip of his right ear,
like a pointed leaf that has been creased sharply between the fingers.
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