174 Hunting the Grisly 



the clusters of spine-bearing trees and cactus, 

 not without getting a considerable number of 

 thorns in our hands and legs. It was very 

 dry and hot. Where the javalinas live in 

 droves in the river bottoms they often drink 

 at the pools; but when some distance from 

 water they seem to live quite comfortably on 

 the prickly pear, slaking their thirst by eating 

 its hard, juicy fibre. 



At last, after several false alarms, and gal 

 lops which led to nothing, when it lacked but 

 an hour of sundown we struck a band of five 

 of the little wild hogs. They were running 

 off through the mesquites with a peculiar 

 hopping or bounding motion, and we all, dogs 

 and men, tore after them instantly. 



Peccaries are very fast for a few hundred 

 yards, but speedily tire, lose their wind, and 

 come to bay. Almost immediately one of 

 these, a sow, as it turned out, wheeled and 

 charged at Moore as he passed, Moore never 

 seeing her but keeping on after another. The 

 sow then stopped and stood still, chattering 

 her teeth savagely, and I jumped off my horse 

 and dropped her dead with a shot in the spine 

 over the shoulders. Moore meanwhile had 

 dashed off after his pig in one direction, and 

 killed the little beast with a shot from the 



