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.