d
coverin' his claims."

It was after noon when the sheriff and his men started westward with
the suspected stock.

Carter, fuming with rage, watched them go. Then he turned to Sanderson.

"Hell an' damnation! We'll hit Devil's Hole about dusk--if we start
now. What'll we do?"

"Start," said Sanderson. "If we hang around here for another day
they'll trump up another fake charge an' clean us out!"

The country through which they were forced to travel during the
afternoon was broken and rugged, and the progress of the herd was slow.
However, according to Carter, they made good time considering the
drawbacks they encountered, and late afternoon found them within a few
miles of the dreaded Devil's Hole.

Carter counseled a halt until morning, and Sanderson yielded. After a
camping ground had been selected Carter and Sanderson rode ahead to
inspect Devil's Hole.

The place was well named. It was a natural basin between some jagged
and impassable foothills, running between a gorge at each end. Both
ends of the basin constricted sharply at the gorges, resembling a wide,
narrow-necked bottle.

A thin stream of water flowed on each side of a hard, rock trail that
ran straight through the center of the basin, and on both sides of the
trail a black bog of quicksand spread, covering the entire surface of
the land.

Halfway through the basin, Sanderson halted Streak on the narrow trail
and looked at the treacherous sand.

"I've seen quicksand, _an'_ quicksand," he declared, "but this is the
bogs of the lot. If any steers get bogged down in there they wouldn't
be able to bellow more than once before they'd sink out of sight!"

"There's a heap of them in there," remarked Carter.

It was an eery place, and the echo of their voices resounded with
ever-increasing faintness.

"I never go through this damned hell-hole without gettin' the creeps,"
declared Carter. "An' I've got nerve enough, too, usually. There's
somethin' about the place that suggests the cattle an' men it's
swallowed.

"Do you see that flat section there?" he indicated a spot about a
hundred yards wide and half as long, which looked like hard, baked
earth, black and dead. "That's where that herd I was tellin' you about
went in. The next morning you couldn't see hide nor hair of them.

"It's a fooler for distance, too," he went on, "it's more than a mile
to that little spot of rock, that projectin' up, over there. College
professors have be