Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1908-11-20

BlanL size, ana The WnOle 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 hospi-
tally characteristic of the ranch u
try everywhere. The son of the ranch
man, a tall. well-built young fellow,
told me at once that there were pee
carries 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 ours 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
1t 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.
We started after breakfast, riding
powerful ~cow-ponies, well trained to
gallop at full speed through the dense
chaparral. The big black hound
slouched at our heels. We rode down
the banks of the Nueces. crossing and
recrossing the stream. Here and
there were long. deep pools in the bed
of the river, where rushes and lilies
grew and huge mailed garfish wan
slowly just beneath the surface of the
water. Once my two companions
stopped to pull a mired cow out of a
slough. hauling with ropes from their
saddle horns. In places there were
half-dry pools, out of the regular cur
rent of the river, the water green and
fetid. The trees were very tall and
large. The streamers of pale gray
moss hung thickly from the branches
of the live-oaks, and when many trees
thus draped stood close together they
bore a strangely mournful m DESC
late look.
We finally found the queer little hut
of the Mexican goat-herder in the
midst of a grove of giant peeans. On
the walls were nailed the skins of
different beasts, raccoons, wildcats.
and the tree-civet, with its ringed tail.
The Mexican's brown wife and chill
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, NhutlMA-ssaR
himself and the goats were off in the
forest. and it took us three or four
hours search before we found him.
Then it was nearly moo and we
lunched in his hut, a square building
of split logs, with bare earth floor. and
roof of ~clap-boards and bark. Our
lunch consisted of goats meat and pan
de mails. The Mexican, a broad-chest-
ed man with a stolid Indian face. was
evidently quite a sportsman, and had
two or three half-starved hounds. be-
sides the funny hairless little house
dogs, of which Mexicans seem so
fond.
Having borrowed the javalina hound
of which we were in search, we rode
off in quest of our game, the two dogs
t~rotting gayly ahead. The one which
had been living at the ranch had evil
IDENTITY Jared well, and was very fat:
the other was little else but skin and
bone, but as alert and knowing as any
New York street-boy. with the same
air of disreputable capacity. 1t was
this hound which always did most in
finding the javalinas and bringing
them to bay, his companions chief
use being to make a noise and lend
the moral support of his presence.
We rode away from the river on the
dry uplands, where the timber, though
/ tIt,I- ,a,- e,.o1I anHafctfan nIn,nctU nv
clusively of the thorny mosquitoes.
Mixed among them were prickly pears.
standing as high as our heads on
horseback, and Spanish bayonets, look
ing in the distance like small palms;
and there were many other kinds of
cactus, all with poisonous thorns. Two
or three times the dogs got on an old
trail and rushed off giving tongue.
whereat we galloped madly after them,
ducking and lodging through and
among the clusters of spine-bearing
trees and cactus, not without getting
a considerable number of thorns in our
hands and legs. 1t was very dry and
hot. Where the javalinas live in
droves in the river bottoms they often
drink at the pools; but when some dis
lance from water they seem to live
quite comfortably on the prickly pear.
shaking their thirst by eating it's hard.
juicy fibre.
At last, after several false alarms.
and gallops which led to nothing, when
it lacked but an hour of shutdown we
struck a band of five of the little wild
hogs. They were running off through
the mosquitoes with n 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
Aocre rs he passed. Moore never see
| f,,r 100. H,,k i-n,p;nn an n flor onathnr