296 WESTERN GRAZING GROUNDS AND FOREST RANGES 



last long and did not seem to spread beyond the ani- 

 mals first attacked. The settlers soon discovered that 

 the victims were all northern stock and that none of 

 the Texas animals died. They also realized that the 

 losses were confined to the cattle which grazed about 

 the old bed-grounds where the trail herds had been 

 bedded down for the night. The disease was attributed 

 to many causes. The droppings of the trail animals 

 were supposed to convey it in some manner. Again it 

 was the slobber of the animals grazing on the grasses 

 by means of which the trouble was caused. In fact, 

 dozens of theories were advanced for the cause of the 

 deaths. 



The settlers arose in their wrath and met the trail 

 herds with their rifles and in some sections strict guard 

 was kept that no trail herds entered certain districts. 

 For years no amount of investigation seemed to solve 

 the problem until a veterinarian took up the question of 

 the ticks which were carried upon the bodies of all 

 Texas cattle. At first his theories were ridiculed. "All 

 cattle had ticks." "The buffalo had them ; all the north- 

 ern cattle had them in their ears ; deer had them ; horses 

 sometimes had them." But the veterinarian persisted 

 in his studies of the matter and eventually proved that 

 the ticks which infested the Texas cattle were different 

 from the common ear tick and that their bodies filled 

 with blood drawn from the Texas cattle conveyed the 

 disease to healthy cattle. 



Still the Texans doubted. "Their cattle were the 

 healthiest in the world." "If the ticks were so deadly 

 why didn't their cattle die?" This side of the ques- 

 tion was one which took many years of painstaking 

 investigation thoroughly to clear up, but it was finally 



