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 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,waterless plains.There had been a heavy frost a few days before,which had blackened the budding mesquite trees,and their twigs still showed no signs of sprouting.Occasionally we came across open space where there was nothing but short brown grass.In most places,however,the leafless,sprawling mesquites were scattered rather thinly over the ground,cutting off an extensive view and merely adding to the melancholy barrenness of the landscape.The road was nothing but a couple of dusty wheel-tracks;the ground was parched,and the grass cropped close by the gaunt,starved cattle.As we drove along buzzards and great hawks occasionally soared overhead.Now and then we passed lines of wild-looking,long-horned steers,and once we came on the grazing horses of a cow-outfit,just preparing to start northward over the trail to the fattening pasture.Occasionally we encountered one or two cowpunchers:either Texans,habited exactly like their brethren in the North,with broad-brimmed gray hats,blue shirts,silk neckerchiefs,and leather leggings;or else Mexicans,more gaudily dressed,and wearing peculiarly stiff,very broad-brimmed hats with conical tops.
Toward the end of our ride we got where the ground was more fertile,and there had recently been a sprinkling of rain.Here we came across wonderful flower prairies.In one spot I kept catching glimpses through the mesquite trees of lilac stretches which I had first thought must be ponds of water.On coming nearer they proved to be acres on acres thickly covered with beautiful lilac-colored flowers.
Farther on we came to where broad bands of red flowers covered the ground for many furlongs;then their places were taken by yellow blossoms,elsewhere by white.Generally each band or patch of ground was covered densely by flowers of the same color,making a great vivid streak across the landscape;but in places they were mixed together,red,yellow,and purple,interspersed in patches and curving bands,carpeting the prairie in a strange,bright pattern.
Finally,toward evening we reached the Nueces.Where we struck it first the bed was dry,except in occasional deep,malarial-looking pools,but a short distance below there began to be a running current.
Great blue herons were stalking beside these pools,and from one we flushed a white ibis.In the woods were reddish cardinal birds,much less brilliant in plumage than the true cardinals and the scarlet tanagers;and yellow-headed titmice which had already built large domed nests.
In the valley of the Nueces itself,the brush grew thick.There were great groves of pecan trees,and ever-green live-oaks stood in many places,long,wind-shaken tufts of gray moss hanging from their limbs.
Many of the trees in the wet spots were of giant size,and the whole landscape was semi-tropical in character.High on a bluff shoulder overlooking the course of the river was perched the ranch house,toward which we were bending our steps;and here we were received with the hearty hospitality characteristic of the ranch country everywhere.
The son of the ranchman,a tall,well-built young fellow,told me at once that there were peccaries in the neighborhood,and that he had himself shot one but two or three days before,and volunteered to lend us horses and pilot us to the game on the morrow,with the help of his two dogs.The last were big black curs with,as we were assured,"considerable hound"in them.One was at the time staying at the ranch house,the other was four or five miles off with a Mexican goat-herder,and it was arranged that early in the morning we should ride down to the latter place,taking the first dog with us and procuring his companion when we reached the goat-herder's house.
