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Show OLD WESTERN STYLE Farmers Pack Guns to Curb Rustlers MADISON. WIS. - Defying mod-ern mod-ern methods of criminal detection, Wood county farmers have banded band-ed together in the old-time vigilante vigi-lante system to curb a recent outbreak out-break of cattle rustling here. An SOS over a rural party telephone tele-phone line prompted the first concerted con-certed manhunt, when 50 farmers, packing guns in old vigilante style, set out on a quest for rustlers. They beat a wooded sector from midnight mid-night until dawn but the rustlers had disappeared. Bernard Krocning, who lives in nearby Rock, saw a car slip up to a woods on his farm, two occupants occu-pants emerging and entering the woods. He fired three shots, chasing chas-ing the men deeper Into the woods. Meanwhile, his wife got busy on the party line to round up the gang of 50 farmers. Before their arrival, however, the mysterious car raced off down the road. Krocning gave chase in his car but lost the quarry. Kroen-ing Kroen-ing told the vigilantes he believed the two strangers still were in the woods and that the car had been driven by a third party, who had remained in it Although hampered by fog. the farmers beat through bushes and thickets for hours without finding the rustlers. Two Marshfleld traffic traf-fic officers and several deputies helped them. An electric wire which charged a fence on the Kroening farm had been turned off by the thieves, and the farmers theorized that the men had made careful preparations prepara-tions for herding the animals through the fence when a truck arrived later. In a previous rustling Incident, mysterious strangers fired on a farmer who came upon them unexpectedly un-expectedly on his farm near Wisconsin Wis-consin Rapids. |