round, one sprang at him and bit him through the calf, inflicting
a very severe wound. I have known of several cases of horses being cut,
however, and the dogs are very commonly killed. Indeed, a dog new to the
business is almost certain to get very badly scarred, and no dog that
hunts steadily can escape without some injury. If it runs in right at
the heads of the animals, the probabilities are that it will get killed;
and, as a rule, even two good-sized hounds cannot kill a peccary,
though it is no larger than either of them. However, a wary, resolute,
hard-biting dog of good size speedily gets accustomed to the chase, and
can kill a peccary single-handed, seizing it from behind and worrying it
to death, or watching its chance and grabbing it by the back of the neck
where it joins the head.

Peccaries have delicately moulded short legs, and their feet are small,
the tracks looking peculiarly dainty in consequence. Hence, they do
not swim well, though they take to the water if necessary. They feed
on roots, prickly pears, nuts, insects, lizards, etc. They usually keep
entirely separate from the droves of half-wild swine that are so often
found in the same neighborhoods; but in one case, on this very ranch
where I was staying a peccary deliberately joined a party of nine pigs
and associated with them. When the owner of the pigs came up to them one
day the peccary manifested great suspicion at his presence, and finally
sidled close up and threatened to attack him, so that he had to shoot
it. The ranchman's son told me that he had never but once had a peccary
assail him unprovoked, and even in this case it was his dog that was the
object of attack, the peccary rushing out at it as it followed him home
one evening through the chaparral. Even around this ranch the peccaries
had very greatly decreased in numbers, and the survivors were learning
some caution. In the old days it had been no uncommon thing for a big
band to attack entirely of their own accord, and keep a hunter up a tree
for hours at a time.

CHAPTER VII.--HUNTING WITH HOUNDS.

In hunting American big game with hounds, several entirely distinct
methods are pursued. The true wilderness hunters, the men who in
the early days lived alone in, or moved in parties through, the
Indian-haunted solitudes, like their successors of to-day, rarely made
use of a pack of hounds, and, as a rule, did not use dogs at all. In
the eastern forests occasionally an old time hu