t for mail and
things from the store. And most always they send Hen. Uncle Dave and
Dirk Tracy had an awful row last winter. It was next thing to a killing.
So of course the outfits ain't on friendly terms."

This was more than Pop had gossiped to Bud, and since the whole thing
was of no concern to him, and Honey plainly objected to talking about
Marian's husband, he was quite ready to fix his interest once more upon
the Sinks. He was surprised when they emerged from a cluster of small,
sage-covered knolls, directly upon the edge of what at first sight
seemed to be another dry river bed--sprawled wider, perhaps, with
irregular arms thrust back into the less sterile land. They rode down a
steep, rocky trail and came out into the Sinks.

It was an odd, forbidding place, and the farther up the gravelly bottom
they rode, the more forbidding it became. Bud thought that in the time
when Indians were dangerous as she-bears the Sinks would not be a place
where a man would want to ride. There were too many jutting crags, too
many unsuspected, black holes that led back--no one knew just where.

Honey led the way to an irregular circle of waterwashed cobbles and
Bud peered down fifty feet to another dry, gravelly bottom seemingly a
duplicate of the upper surface. She rode on past other caves, and let
him look down into other holes. There were faint rumblings in some of
these, but in none was there any water showing save in stagnant pools in
the rock where the rain had fallen.

"There's one cave I like to go into," said Honey at last. "It's a little
farther on, but we have time enough. There's a spring inside, and we
can eat our sandwiches. It isn't dark-there are openings to the top, and
lots of funny, winding passages. That," she finished thrillingly, "is
the place the Indians claim is haunted."

Bud did not shudder convincingly, and they rode slowly forward, picking
their way among the rocks. The cave yawned wide open to the sun, which
hung on the top of Catrock Peak. They dismounted, anchored the reins
with rocks and went inside.

When Bud had been investigative Buddy, he had explored more caves than
he could count. He had filched candles from his mother and had crept
back and back until the candle flame flickered warning that he was
nearing the "damps" Indians always did believe caves were haunted,
probably because they did not understand the "damps", and thought evil
spirits had taken those who went in and never returne