Playing for the Edge

"Those are armadillo tracks," says Jim Baker. "And that's a coyote turd."

"Where?"

A stream of well-chewed Red Man tobacco -- a replacement for his three-pack- a-day cigarette habit -- arcs expertly toward a barely visible target about four feet away. "Right there," he says. "Bull's-eye." It is the last day of 1988. In three weeks James Addison Baker III will become America's next Secretary of State.

Baker and a companion are turkey hunting on 1,366 acres of Texas scrubland about 50 miles south of San Antonio, a wild, almost barren part of the U.S. where it is easy to believe...