usually found in
parties of from twenty to thirty, feeding in the dense chaparral, the
sows rejoining the herd with the young very soon after the birth of the
litter, each sow usually having but one or two at a litter. At night
they sometimes lay in the thickest cover, but always, where possible,
preferred to house in a cave or big hollow log, one invariably remaining
as a sentinel close to the mouth, looking out. If this sentinel were
shot, another would almost certainly take his place. They were subject
to freaks of stupidity, and were pugnacious to a degree. Not only would
they fight if molested, but they would often attack entirely without
provocation.

Once my friend Moore himself, while out with another cowboy on
horseback, was attacked in sheer wantonness by a drove of these little
wild hogs. The two men were riding by a grove of live-oaks along a
woodcutter's cart track, and were assailed without a moment's warning.
The little creatures completely surrounded them, cutting fiercely at the
horses' legs and jumping up at the riders' 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 mesquite tree, and
kept him there for nearly two hours, looking 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 ho