262 
GEO. C. PRITCHARD. 
whatever against the infection, and in a short time an outbreak 
of Texas fever occurred, and I, as State veterinarian, was wired 
to come immediately and make an investigation. The cattle 
were in Russell County, Kansas, and the sheriff had a large 
body of men to guard them, although the cattle were in a pas¬ 
ture fenced in with a wire fence, and one man would have been 
ample security to that community that the disease would be 
kept confined to the pasture they were in. There was perhaps 
five or six dead cattle, possibly four or five that showed signs of 
the fever. I placed the cattle under temporary quarantine and 
notified the Live Stock Commission, who, after a thorough in¬ 
vestigation, sustained the quarantine, and prescribed such regu¬ 
lations as was usual at that time, and at the same time tried to 
satisfy the community that the infection would be kept confined 
entirely to the pasture they were in ; and in fact there was not 
the least danger of its spreading under the regulations adopted 
by the board. However, the people were not satisfied, at least 
pretended they were not, and took the matter into their own 
hands, placed a large number of men to guard the cattle, built a 
corral in which the cattle were placed at night, bought hay with 
which to burn the dead cattle. I remember one itemized bill 
was hay, $5.00 ; hauling and burning cattle, $16.00, and so on; 
it was really remarkable the schemes those people devised to 
run up bills against those cattle. Now of course the bills had 
to be brought before the Live Stock Sanitary Commission and 
allowed, and assessed to the proper parties. This was done, but 
the board saw fit to cut down the bills some 200 per cent. ; of 
course, this did not suit the people in Russell County; the 
owners of the cattle were going to get away with two or three 
cattle left, after paying the bills at the figures the board had al¬ 
lowed, and this would never do. The sheriff of the county 
accepted the money, upon the basis allowed by the board, but 
when he returned to Russell County the people would not allow 
the cattle to be moved unless the full amount of the bills was 
paid; they ignored the Live Stock Sanitary Commission’s 
orders to turn the cattle over to the owners, and the County 
