35 2 The Wilderness Hunter. 



feet. The men, drawing their revolvers, dashed through 

 and were closely followed by their pursuers for three or 

 four hundred yards, although they fired right and left with 

 good effect. Both of the horses were badly cut. On 

 another occasion the bookkeeper of the ranch walked off 

 to a water hole but a quarter of a mile distant, and came 

 face to face with a peccary on a cattle trail, where the 

 brush was thick. Instead of getting out of his way the 

 creature charged him instantly, drove him up a small mes- 

 quite tree, and kept him there for nearly two hours, look- 

 ing up at him and champing its tusks. 



I spent two days hunting round this ranch but saw no 

 peccary sign whatever, although deer were quite plentiful. 

 Parties of wild geese and sandhill cranes occasionally flew 

 overhead. At nightfall the poor-wills wailed everywhere 

 through the woods, and coyotes yelped and yelled, while 

 in the early morning the wild turkeys gobbled loudly 

 from their roosts in the tops of the pecan trees. 



Having satisfied myself that there were no javalinas 

 left on the Frio ranch, and being nearly at the end of my 

 holiday, I was about to abandon the effort to get any, 

 when a passing cowman happened to mention the fact 

 that some were still to be found on the Nueces River 

 thirty miles or thereabouts to the southward. Thither I 

 determined to go, and next morning Moore and I started 

 in a buggy drawn by a redoubtable horse, named Jim 

 Swinger, which we were allowed to use because he bucked 

 so under the saddle that nobody on the ranch could ride 

 him. We drove six or seven hours across the dry, water- 

 less plains. There had been a heavy frost a few days 



