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.