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.
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