A Herd Of Drunken Steers

Fort Scott special to St. Louis GlobeDemocrat: A herd of Texas steers, literally intoxicated on the fermented juice of rotten apples, is an emergency not contemplated by the authors of the Kansas prohibition law, and its seeveral amendments; yet such a spectacle ■ was recently witnessed by the chief of the metropolitan pólice forcé of this city and the sheriff of Bourbon cDunty, who have explicit instructions from the department of the state to rigidly suppress the use of intoxicating liquor by the people of their respective jurisdictions. Patrick Gorman, an extensive stock feeder, a few days ago shipped to nis ranch, ten miles northwest of this city, a herd of wild steers from the plajns of Texas, During their flrst night on a Kansas ranch they stampeded through the line fence of the pasture 'nto an apple orchard of the Alf Cleal farm. The proliflc fruit season made it unprofltable for Mr. Cleal to gather but a small per cent of his early apples, and the burdened trees had dropped their ripened fruit to the ground full three layers deep. The apples had rotted and were in a state of fermentation that makes them a most intoxicating feast for cattle. Until the next morning the beasts glutted themselves, and Were found in a condition of inebriocy that caused them to conduct themselves with that boisterous hilarity in which man is want to indulge when overeóme by the effects of Kansas "applejack." The effect of the fermented apple juice was as varied in the cattle as it would have been in as many men. Some of them bellowed and contorted in drunken debauohery, others were on their muscle and dangerously vicious, while some of them laid helpless and harmless. Their demonstrations attracted the neighbors for miles about, and when the facts became known in town crowds of people drove out to witness the revelry of a 'steer beer garden." They were rounded up and corralled with much difflculty by a score of experienced cattlemen. Not unlike human drunkards, the effects of the dissipation on some passed off soon, while others were in the "sobering up" process for two days.