the lack of necessary rest, food, and water will produce fever aboard
emigrant steamships, the same privations might do it among animals. The
overdriving of trail cattle was frequently unavoidable, dry drives and
the lack of grass on arid wastes being of common occurrence. However,
the presence of fever among through cattle was never noticeable to the
practical man, and if it existed, it must have been very mild in form
compared to its virulent nature among natives. Time has demonstrated
that it is necessary for the domestic animals to walk over and occupy
the same ground to contract the disease, though they may drink from the
same trough or stream of water, or inhale each other's breath in play
across a wire fence, without fear of contagion. A peculiar feature of
Texas fever was that the very cattle which would impart it on their
arrival, after wintering in the North would contract it and die the same
as natives. The isolation of herds on a good range for a period of sixty
days, or the falling of frost, was recognized as the only preventive
against transmitting the germ. Government rewards and experiments have
never demonstrated a theory that practical experience does not dispute.

The only time on this drive that our attention had been called to the
fever alarm was on crossing the wagon trail running from Pierre on the
Missouri River to the Black Hills. I was in the lead when a large bull
train was sighted in our front, and shortly afterward the wagon-boss
met me and earnestly begged that I allow his outfit to pass before we
crossed the wagon-road. I knew the usual form of ridicule of a herd
foreman, but the boss bull-whacker must have anticipated my reply, for
he informed me that the summer before he had lost ninety head out of
two hundred yoke of oxen. The wagon-master's appeal was fortified by a
sincerity which won his request, and I held up my cattle and allowed his
train to pass in advance. Sponsilier's herd was out of sight in my rear,
while Forrest was several miles to my left, and slightly behind me. The
wagon-boss rode across and made a similar request of Forrest, but that
worthy refused to recognize the right of way to a bull train at the
expense of a trail herd of government beeves. Ungentlemanly remarks are
said to have passed between them, when the boss bull-whacker threw down
the gauntlet and galloped back to his train. Forrest pushed on, with
ample time to have occupied the road in crossing, thus holding