The thousands behind, though, running blindly, in the grip of the
nameless terror that had seized them, saw nothing, heeded nothing, and
they swept, in a smother of dust, straight over the spot where Soapy
and his horse had been.
White-lipped, catching his breath in gasps over the horror, Sanderson
again turned his back to the herd and raced on. The same accident
might happen to him, but there was no time to pick and choose his trail.
Behind him, with the thundering noise of a devastating avalanche, the
herd came as though nothing had happened. The late moon that had been
touching the peaks of the far mountains now lifted a rim over them,
flooding the world with a soft radiance. Sanderson had reached the
center of the trail, through Devil's Hole, before he again looked back.
What he saw caused him to pull Streak up with a jerk. The head of the
herd had burst through the entrance to the Hole, and, opening fanlike,
had gone headlong into the quicksand.
Fascinated with the magnitude of the catastrophe, Sanderson paid no
attention to the few steers that went past him, snorting wildly; he sat
rigid on his horse and watched the destruction of the herd.
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