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.

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 swam 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 current 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 and desolate look.

We finally found the queer little hut of the Mexican goat-herder in the midst of a grove of giant pecans.  On the walls were nailed the skins of different beasts, raccoons, wild-cats, and the tree-civet, with its ringed tail.  The Mexican’s brown wife and children were in the hut, but the man 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 noon, 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 goat’s meat and pan de mais.  The Mexican, a broad-chested man with a stolid Indian face, was evidently quite a sportsman, and had two or three half-starved hounds, besides 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 trotting gayly ahead.  The one which had been living at the ranch had evidently fared 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.  It was this hound which always did most in finding the javalinas and bringing them to bay, his companion’s chief use being to make a noise and lend the moral support of his presence.