As the commotion in the alley subsided, Tug came back to the colt’s pen and opened the gate. No sooner had he done that when Cat climbed over the fence on one side of his pen, and Ben climbed over the fence on the other, and both men were at the back of the pen and behind the colt, leaving the only place for him to go was to the gate Tug had just opened. Feeling as though he needed to run for his life, the colt bolted for the opening and turned to the right. He went only a short distance before running into what looked like a fence across the alley that blocked his way. He turned around and saw an opening for him to flee back the way he had come, so he took it. He went clear to what he thought was the end of the alley, only to find another opening that went off to his left, so he took that, too.

After making the turn, he had gone only about a hundred feet when he noticed the end of the alley he was in narrowed down to what looked to him to be a small black hole. He stopped dead in his tracks, wheeled back around and tried to go back the way he’d come, but found it closed off by another fence. He knew he had just come from where there now was what seemed to be a solid fence. He charged up to the fence and frantically paced back and forth in front of it, dropping his head low, looking for an opening big enough for him to get through, then rearing up to try and find an opening somewhere above.

Finding neither, he wheeled back around and headed back toward the hole, only to turn back again. When he did, he found once more that the fence had moved closer to him. This worried him even more and he turned and ran toward the hole again. Again he turned back and again, the fence had moved closer to him. He realized then that the moving fence was forcing him into the black hole.

It had been a technique stockmen used for nearly as long as there was stock that needed to be moved from one place to another. Alleys were set up with a number of gates hung at different intervals throughout, so animals could be moved simply by getting them headed in the direction they needed to go, then as soon as they got past a certain point, someone would close a gate behind them. Doing this effectively shortened the distance one ultimately needed to travel with the stock, and also got them closer to the destination without them being able to go back the way they came. Every time the colt passed one of the gates in the alley, one of the ranch hands would simply swing a gate shut behind him, moving him closer to the trailer by twenty-foot intervals. If he got stuck and refused to move closer to the trailer, either Cat, Ben or Matt would take off their hats and wave them around in the colt’s direction. That was always enough to get him moving again. After an hour, the men had worked the colt past the final gate in the alley, and like the others, it, too, swung closed behind him.