CHAPTER XXI 



A HUNT WITH A SQUATTER 



To begin these stories: 



In 1837 Audubon visited Texas. 



In the course of his excursions there he met with a 

 squatter whose drove of hogs was being depleted by a 

 cougar, or a " painter/' as the man called the thieving ani- 

 mal. The squatter told the naturalist of his losses, and 

 asked him to go with him and hunt down the cougar. 



The narrative of this hunt is one of the most interest- 

 ing in Audubon's tales of the forests. It is told naturally, 

 but with the vividness of an impressionalist. The reader 

 finds himself in the hunt rather than reading about it. 



" Day dawned, and the squatter's call to his hogs, 

 which, being almost in a wild state, were suffered to seek 

 the greater portion of their food in the woods, awakened 

 me. Being ready dressed, I was not long in joining him. 

 The hogs and their young came grunting at the well-known 

 call of their owner, who threw them a few ears of corn 

 and counted them, but told me that for some weeks their 

 number had been greatly diminished by the ravages com- 

 mitted upon them by a large panther, by which name the 

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