There would have been no opportunity to save Soapy, even if Streak had obeyed his master. The first few steers at the head of the mass swerved around the fallen man and his horse, for they could see him. 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. A great mass of steers had gone into the quicksand at the very edge of the Hole; they formed a foothold for many others that, forced on by the impetus of the entire mass, crushed them down, trampled them further into the sand, and plunged ahead to their own destruction. It was a continually recurring incident. Maddened, senseless, unreasoning in their panic, the mass behind came on, a sea of tossing horns, a maelstrom of swirling, blinding dust and heaving bodies into the mire; the struggling, enmeshed bodies of the vanguard forming a living floor, over which each newcomer swept to oblivion. Feeling his utter helplessness, Sanderson continued to watch. There was nothing he could do; he was like a mere atom of sand on a seashore, with the storm waves beating over him. The scene continued a little longer. Sanderson saw none of the men of the outfit. The dust died down, settling like a pall over the neck of the Hole. A few steers, chancing to come straight ahead through the neck of the Hole, and thus striking the hard, narrow trail that ran through the center, continued to pass Sanderson. They were still in the grip of a frenzy; and at the far end of the Hole he saw a number of them bogged down. They had not learned the lesson of the first entrance.