Test Bank For Managerial Communication Strategies and Applications, 7th Edition, Geraldine E. Hynes, Jennifer R. Veltsos
Test Bank For Managerial Communication Strategies and Applications, 7th Edition, Geraldine E. Hynes, Jennifer R. Veltsos
Test Bank For Managerial Communication Strategies and Applications, 7th Edition, Geraldine E. Hynes, Jennifer R. Veltsos
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Hynes, Managerial Communication 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: 1920s: The Human Relations Approach and the Rise of Interpersonal
Communication
Difficulty Level: Medium
17. The earliest known example of managerial communication may be the record
keeping procedure developed by Sumerian priests around ______.
A. 1,000 CE.
B. 1 CE.
C. 5,000 BCE.
D. 8,000 BCE.
Ans: C
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Management Communication in Ancient Times
Difficulty Level: Medium
21. All of the following business leaders and philosophers are associated with scientific
management EXCEPT ______.
A. Lee Iacocca
B. Frederick Taylor
C. Ray Kroc
D. Frank Gilbreth
Ans: A
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: 1900s: Management Efficiency and One-Way Communication
Difficulty Level: Medium
22. Dale Carnegie’s philosophy stressed that managers should use which of the
following strategies to attain employee commitment?
A. economic incentives
B. the authority of the manager’s position
C. interpersonal communication
D. threat
Ans: C
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: 1920s: The Human Relations Approach and the Rise of Interpersonal
Communication
Difficulty Level: Medium
Hynes, Managerial Communication 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
23. The Hawthorne studies indicated that the best way to increase worker productivity is
to ______.
A. show personal interest in the workers
B. change the lighting
C. change the work conditions
D. increase worker compensation
Ans: A
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: 1920s: The Human Relations Approach and the Rise of Interpersonal
Communication
Difficulty Level: Medium
25. Which of the following caused the Empowerment approach to become popular?
A. intense global competition
B. rapidly developing technology
C. the need for faster product development
D. all of these
Ans: D
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: 1990s: The Empowerment Approach and Participative
Communication
Difficulty Level: Medium
26. What are the four most common types of workplace diversity?
A. gender, culture, age, and education
B. religion, nationality, age, and gender
C. race, ethnicity, religion, and outlook
D. urbanization, acculturation, orientation, and education
Ans: A
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Hynes, Managerial Communication 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
Answer Location: Diversity
Difficulty Level: Medium
True/False
1. The workplace is less diverse and more complex than it was a few decades ago.
Ans: F
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Factors Affecting Communication Contingencies
Difficulty Level: Easy
3. Scientific management identifies the most efficient and effective manner for
performing a task.
Ans: T
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: 1900s: Management Efficiency and One-Way Communication
Difficulty Level: Easy
5. Dale Carnegie was one of the first writers to link communication skills with
managerial effectiveness.
Ans: T
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: 1920s: The Human Approach and the Rise of Interpersonal
Communication
Difficulty Level: Easy
6. The Hawthorne studies were originally designed to show the attitudes of employees
toward telephone communication.
Ans: F
Hynes, Managerial Communication 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: 1920s: The Human Approach and the Rise of Interpersonal
Communication
Difficulty Level: Easy
7. The human relations approach during the Carnegie era was manipulative.
Ans: F
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: 1920s: The Human Approach and the Rise of Interpersonal
Communication
Difficulty Level: Easy
11. The contingency approach was a management philosophy in the 20th century.
Ans: F
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: 21st Century: The Contingency Approach to Management
Communication
Difficulty Level: Easy
Hynes, Managerial Communication 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
12. Diversity issues are found in the areas of gender, culture, age, and education.
Ans: T
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Diversity
Difficulty Level: Easy
14. Education diversity has decreased managers’ ability to seek help from employees.
Ans: F
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Education Diversity
Difficulty Level: Easy
15. Ethics in business is constantly evolving to match emerging norms and values and
varies from country to country.
Ans: T
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Ethics
Difficulty Level: Easy
19. Weak managers are more likely to use new social media technologies to facilitate
collaboration on work projects than effective managers are.
Ans: F
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Ethics
Difficulty Level: Easy
20. Business transactions were recorded in the Middle East as early as 5000 BCE.
Ans: T
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Management Communication in Ancient Times
Difficulty Level: Easy
Short Answer
1. What are some of the differences between men and women in workplace
communication style?
Ans: Men may be more assertive than women. Women show more social support and
sympathy to colleagues. Men and women provide different types of feedback.
Leadership styles of men and women differ. Women and men convey a different
nonverbal message with the same gesture. Men use space differently with other men
than with women. Men and women use different persuasive strategies. Women in
management are typically more risk averse than men, take a longer term perspective,
and are more relationship oriented.
Learning Objective:
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Gender Diversity
Difficulty Level: Medium
At Havre, Robin found time between trains to cross the street and
find the livery stable.
“I left a saddle here about Christmas,” he said to the hostler. “A
three-quarter rig Cheyenne with a pair of anqueros.”
“Yeah, I recollect. Take a look,” the man replied.
Robin hauled his saddle out of the harness room, borrowed a
sack to put it in and check it as baggage on the train. He was under
way up the branch line within ten minutes. An hour and a half later
he stood on the station platform at Big Sandy, wondering with a
mingled curiosity and indifference how long it would be before a
deputy sheriff would saunter up and say with a casual wariness:
“Well, kid, I guess you’ll have to come along with me.”
No, in the face of those purple mountains lifting high in the
southeast, the limitless stretch of lonesome Prairie spreading north
to the Canada line, all those familiar places, the troublesome future
didn’t seem to matter so much. Silent, lonely, sterile here and there,
forbidding at first glance to such as were bred to field and lane and
orchard, the plains wove their own charm about the hearts of men.
All those leagues of grass and hill and canyon seemed to hold out
invisible hands to Robin. Bright with its vernal garment the land
smiled answer to his eager look as a maiden smiles to a returning
lover.
He stood a minute sweeping old horizons with his gaze. The
station agent nodded. No one had arrived. No one had departed. It
was too early in the morning for loungers. A man from Sutherland’s
store took up the mail sack, said “hello” to Robin. Robin followed him
across the street. He would put up at the hotel. If he went
unmolested for the present—and that was likely enough—he would
take horse later and ride to the Bar M Bar. If they wanted him they
could come and get him. Months in a strange country had taught
Robin that he was not the stuff of which an Ishmael is made.
The moon-faced Teutonic host of the Bear Paw House gazed at
him blandly over a varnished counter.
“Ach, so,” he said. “You have been away, yes.”
No more. Robin signed the register. From force of old habit he
suggested a drink. Host and guest went into the bar. Backed by a
mirror that reflected polished glass and decorative bottles a
bartender Robin had known for years said, “Hello, kid,” and set out
the drinks. Robin grew a little puzzled. This was carrying the normal
cow-country nonchalance toward a man who had been in “trouble” to
an extreme. He might have been gone only overnight, by their
attitude, instead of having jumped the country after killing a well-
known man.
He drank, and leaned on the bar, gazing about. A rider loped from
somewhere about the town and dismounted with a flourish before
the hotel. He stalked in, clanking his spurs. Robin knew him, Jack
Boyd of the Block S.
“Hello, old-timer.” He pumped Robin’s hand and slapped him on
the back. “Where the hell you been all winter? Have a shot.”
“On the coast,” Robin said briefly.
They drank. Boyd talked. He was a rattle tongue, no sequence to
his conversation. Robin’s wonder grew. What ailed them all? Were
they all with him, and trying to make him feel at ease, guessing that
he had come back to face trial? Men had done that before.
His gaze for a second turned to the open door. Across the street a
livery barn bulked large. Its double doors gaped on the brown earth
roadway. A man led out a saddled horse, put his foot in the stirrup
and swung up.
Robin stared incredulously. He could see the features under the
gray Stetson. The flash of silver conchos on saddle, silver inlay on
bit and spur, glinting in the sun; Robin saw these and still could not
believe.
He turned to Boyd.
“Who’s that on the black horse?” he demanded.
Boyd left off an argument with the bartender to look.
“You been snow-blind lately?” he laughed. “Your eyes still full of
that Puget Sound fog? That’s Shinin’ Mark. You know as well as I
do.”
“He’s actin’ meaner’n I ever knew him since he got around,” Boyd
added in a lower tone. “Some of these days, somebody that’s hot in
the head and quick on the draw is goin’ to get him right.”
“Since he got around?” Robin caught at the first sentence,
repeated it in an interrogative tone.
“Wasn’t it before you went away? No? Well he got careless with
his six-gun down in the Birch Creek line camp last winter and shot
his fool self. Darned near cashed in. He was on the bed ground for
two months.”
Robin listened, with a loud thumping in his breast, a feeling of
relief that was like a great weight rolled off his back. He had seen the
glaze of death gather in Mark Steele’s eyes as his knees sagged
under him. He had stood there looking down at the red stain
spreading and soaking into the dirt floor. He had seen Mark lie like a
log for twenty minutes. It had never occurred to Robin that he wasn’t
dead. How could a man, even an iron-hard man, survive a .45 slug
through the base of his neck, in the region of his wishbone? Yet
there he was, reining in a black horse that curvetted and twisted in
eagerness to be off, while Mark talked to the stableman. Robin could
see his lips move.
The old passion flickered up in Robin’s breast. All the indignity, the
calculated insults, the treachery, Tex Matthews’ death, Steele’s bold
thievery, stirred Robin’s blood again. The old sores reopened.
So that was how it went? He wondered why. What had caused
Steele and Thatcher to take that tack? Accident! Didn’t want it known
that an unarmed boy had shot him with his own gun. Vanity?
Perhaps. It didn’t matter.
Tucked within the waistband of his trousers Robin’s .45 rested
against his stomach. He slid his hand under his coat, felt the curved
bone handle of the gun and took a step toward the door. Boyd’s eyes
had been on his face, in which all unconsciously something of
Robin’s feelings must have been reflected. Boyd caught his arm as
he moved.
“Aw, look. Let him go for this time,” he counseled cheerfully. “You
got all the time there is to carry on your private war. He’s pullin’ for
Lonesome Prairie. They’re gatherin’ saddle stock. He wanted me to
ride with him but I ain’t quite ready. Pass it up this time, Robin. Have
a drink and let him go. Who wants to throw lead on a spring day like
this?”
Robin laughed. He could scarcely have followed up that first
impulse since at that very moment Shining Mark gave the black his
head and broke away in a gallop. Robin watched him grow small
until he was a bobbing dot on the out trail. Then he said to Jack
Boyd:
“I guess he’ll keep for awhile.”
“Let’s amble across to the Silver Dollar,” Jack suggested. “There’s
some fellows over there.”
The afternoon and evening Robin spent was like that of a prodigal
son returned. He had not been in Big Sandy since the evening he cut
his string and went home full of shame and impotent anger. He had
come back under a cloud. That cloud was dispelled. Here on his own
ground, among his own peers, he passed the first carefree hours
that had fallen to his lot in weary months.
He went to bed at midnight and lay for a few minutes in the dark
room staring at the dim walls, smiling to himself. He did not care
what came next. Shining Mark was still to be reckoned with. He still
had his own word to make good. But that would be man to man, if at
all. In Robin’s mind the T Bar S and theft still remained a problem to
be solved if he desired to remain in the Bear Paws. But the outcome
of any personal clash with Mark Steele was something Robin could
now accept with composure. Somehow, in his mind, Shining Mark
had shrunk to normal proportions. Or perhaps he himself had grown.
He couldn’t say. But he knew how he felt.
Robin ate breakfast in the morning, took horse and rode south,
rode with a heart as light as the little clouds drifting around Shadow
Butte. The Butte itself lifted its cone summit high above him. He rode
past it on ground softened by spring rains, warmed by a spring sun,
green with new grass and speckled with flowers. The creeks ran
clear and strong. The Bear Paws nursed snowcaps on the highest
peaks, white pyramids on a base of dusky pine. Crows sailed cawing
around him. Meadow larks swung on sagebrush trilling their mating
song. Robin lifted his lusty young voice in a ribald version of The
Spanish Cavalier, a careless horseman chanting as he rode.
He pulled up a minute on the ridge where he had watched the
sunset with May Sutherland, and the singing mood passed. It was all
different now. His face turned toward the Bar M Bar. He rode on
soberly wondering what his welcome would be like. He stopped once
more to gaze at the closed door of his own cabin, but he did not
dismount. The new grass was springing thick in the bluejoint
meadow. He smiled. He might have a use for that place yet.
Ten minutes later he rode into Mayne’s. Old Dan himself stood in
the stable door. He stared at Robin, speechless.
“Well, I’m back,” Robin announced the obvious.
Mayne shook his hand, but there was no heartiness in his grip.
“You ain’t exactly overcome with joy, are you?” Robin challenged.
“What’s wrong with you—or with me?”
“Nothin’. Nothin’ a-tall,” Mayne protested. “Only—well, things is
sorta different, I guess, from last fall.”
“How?” Robin’s tone was curt.
“Aw, hell,” Mayne growled. “I might as well give it to you straight.
Me an’ Mark Steele has buried the hatchet. He’s bought a half
interest in the Bar M Bar. We was a little wrong about them T Bar
S’s. Anyway, that’s settled. So—well, you see how it is, don’t you?”
“You’ve took Mark Steele in as a partner?” Robin stared with
narrowing eyes.
“Yeah. His old man died in Oklahoma an’ left him fifteen thousand
cash. It come about kinda offhand. They hauled Mark up here after—
after he got shot down Birch Creek, an’ we took care of him. He ain’t
so bad when you know him.”
“I see,” Robin said slowly. “So because he has a bunch of money
to put in with you you’ve overlooked a little thing like him stealin’ your
stock. You’ve taken a cow thief for a partner!”
“That’s tall talk, young feller,” Mayne growled.
“Maybe. But I’ve said it. If it worries you I won’t talk no more. But
you know what I think. Yes, it sure makes it different,” Robin
muttered. “I’ll go see Ivy an’ ride on.”
“You better——” Mayne began, but Robin had turned his back and
was striding toward the house. The old man stood leaning against
the stable wall, twisting his scraggly mustache, poking absently at
the soft earth with the toe of his boot. His expression was not
precisely a happy one.
Robin stalked through the kitchen. Whether driven by eagerness
or anxiety he did not consider. Of old Ivy would have run across the
yard to meet him. He found her in the living room sitting beside a
window which commanded the yard. He knew she had seen him.
She rose as he entered but there was no welcome in her eyes. They
were darkly sullen, a little frightened.
Robin didn’t speak. He came up to her, put his hands on her
shoulders, looked searchingly into her face. What he saw there
troubled him with a sudden heart heaviness. To be near her stirred
him deeply. Yet as he looked at her he knew that something which
had linked them close was gone, extinguished like a burned-out
candle.
“You don’t seem noway glad to see me,” he said gently.
“Did you expect me to be?” she returned. “You never wrote.”
“How could I, the way things were?” he asked. “You know I would
have sent word. It never struck you I’d either do that or come back
because I couldn’t stay away from—from everybody and
everything?”
“You ran like a scared coyote,” she said tensely. “An’ you didn’t
shoot Mark, after all. He shot himself with his own gun. You were just
scared of him.”
“Yes? Well?”
Robin paused on the interrogation. He shook her gently.
“Are you goin’ to bust everythin’ up between us?” he asked
quietly. “Is that the way you feel? Did I have to camp right on your
trail to hold you?”
“It’s already busted,” Ivy snapped.
She shook herself free of his hands, backed away a step or two,
looking at Robin with a dumb implacable resentment smoldering in
her eyes. She turned to a shelf on the wall, took something out of a
box and handed it to Robin without a word. It was the little diamond
he had given her—their engagement ring. Robin held it in the palm
of his hand. A pang of sadness, mingled with a touch of anger
stabbed him.
“Maybe it’ll do for another girl,” Ivy said spitefully. “I don’t need it
no more.”
“Neither do I,” he said hotly, and flung the ring into the dead ash of
the fireplace. For a moment they stared at the puff of ashes where it
fell, at each other. The girl’s lips quivered. Robin turned on his heel
and walked out of the house.
Old Mayne still leaned against the stable wall. Robin gathered up
his reins, turned to ask a question.
“Ivy goin’ to marry Steele?”
He shot the words at Mayne with a harshness that made the old
man start.
“I reckon so,” he said apologetically. “I kain’t help it.”
“Nobody said you could,” Robin flung over his shoulder as he
reached for his stirrup.
Dark found him sitting with his feet on his own stove, in a house
without food or bedding, thinking, thinking! To-morrow he would ride
back to town. But to-night—here—he was not conscious of hunger
nor of physical discomfort as he sat with hands clasped over his
knees with an ache in his breast and a turmoil in his brain.
Sometimes it was bad for a man to see things too clearly.
CHAPTER XVII
A CHALLENGE
Before dawn Robin saddled and headed south on the trail of Red
Mike. Minus supper and breakfast he was hungry. But his mount was
fresh and fed with grazing in the little pasture. Robin was tough. A
meal more or less didn’t greatly matter. And sunrise brought him a
happier mood. Luck also bestowed a double quantum as if to make
up for past niggardliness. Ten miles from the Bar M Bar he ate hot
cakes and coffee with a lowly sheep herder tending his flock on the
northern flank of Chase Hill. Within an hour of that camp he found
his sorrel horse, ranging as the cow horse at liberty was wont to
range, with a band of the untamed.
The wild bunch broke headlong in the general direction of the Bar
M Bar. Robin fell in behind them. The direction suited his book. He
had a bed roll and a packsaddle still at Mayne’s, and a cow-
puncher’s bed was part of his working outfit. He would need that
bedding.
So he loped behind the wild horses until they ran themselves out.
Once Robin caught up and jogged at their heels he headed them
where he wished. With rope ready he watched his chance. A touch
of the spurs, a deft throw, and the rawhide noose closed about Red
Mike’s burnished copper neck.
Robin led him on to Mayne’s, changed his saddle to Red Mike’s
back and lashed his bedding on the livery horse. He saw Ivy’s face
for a moment at a window. Her father strolled over to say a word or
two. Robin answered in monosyllables, not because he was still
angry or resentful—that had all evaporated—but because there was
nothing more to say. When the last hitch was taken in the pack rope
he rode on.
He slept that night at a horse ranch in the foothills halfway
between Shadow Butte and Big Sandy. Before noon he was in sight
of the town, the pack horse trotting to keep up with Red Mike’s
running walk. He did not know what he was going to do but that
uncertainty sat lightly on his mind. He had money in his pocket. An
able range rider was welcome anywhere. In all the long tier of states
bordering the east slope of the Rockies a man who could ride and
rope could be a rolling stone and still gather moss. If the Bar M Bar
and the Block S were both taboo there was still the Bear Paw Pool,
the Shonkin, the YT and the Circle within a radius of seventy miles.
He did not have to quit Montana, only that immediate section of the
Bear Paw mountains—and that merely because he chose, because
the south side of the hills had grown distasteful as well as
dangerous. On the latter count alone he would not have retreated.
He was not even sure he would leave. He would never run again.
Once was enough.
But still he was minded to leave Birch Creek and Little Eagle and
Chase Hill, all that varied region he had haunted for three happy
years. Robin wanted to go clean, to be rid of every tie. Most of them
were broken. There remained only that hundred and sixty acres
which he had dreamed of making a home. He would sell it if he
could, for what he could get. Since the Block S was the only outfit
that set any store by land Robin thought he might sell it to Adam
Sutherland. Looking far-sightedly into a future that should long
outlast himself Sutherland had increased his acreage as his herds
increased. Sutherland would give him something for that homestead,
although old Adam owned thousands of acres he had got for a song
and sung the song himself. Robin didn’t want to see it again. Shining
Mark in partnership with Dan Mayne. Mark marrying Ivy. Pah!
Yet in spite of these dolors riding across earth that exhaled the
odor of new growth under a sun blazing yellow in a sapphire sky,
Robin’s spirits gradually rose. A man couldn’t be sad in the spring
astride of a horse that bounced under him like a rubber ball. Robin
whistled. He sang little snatches of song. He pulled up on a hill to
stare across the flat in which Big Sandy lay. Space and freedom!
Room to move and breathe—and some to spare. The sunrise plains
before they were fenced and trammeled. A new, new land but
yesterday wrested by the cattleman with his herds from the Indian
and the buffalo. Robin could not wholly and consciously visualize the
old wild west of which he was a part. He could only feel instinctively
that as it was it was good.
Concretely his mind turned upon matters of immediate concern.
Below him, where Big Sandy creek debouched from the rolling
country he saw tents and wagons and a cluster of horses.
“Aha,” he said to Red Mike, “there’s the Block S. They’re in off
Lonesome Prairie. They’ll be draggin’ it to the home ranch to get
organized for round-up. I reckon Shinin’ Mark’ll be in town.”
It was out of his way to swing over to the Block S camp. He had
no qualms about bearding the wolf (Robin couldn’t think of Mark
Steele as a lion; a lion in his mind had a certain majesty) but he saw
no reason for seeking the wolf in his own lair. Town would do as well.
He had no desire to avoid Shining Mark. In fact he had a certain
curiosity about what Mark would do or say when they met. To
Thatcher he gave scarcely a second thought.
He stabled his horses. By the hitching rack before the Silver Dollar
a row of cow ponies drooped their heads in equine patience. Robin
walked into the saloon. His gun was belted on his hip, the first time
he had ever carried a six-shooter openly in Big Sandy. Steele was
not there. Block S men, Jack Boyd among them, greeted him
hilariously. Thatcher alone neither spoke nor smiled. Robin looked
him in the eye.
“Well,” he said casually, “if there’s anything on your mind I’m
listenin’.”
“Nothin’ much besides my hat,” Thatcher made a feeble effort at
grinning. “I’m not lookin’ for trouble—unless you are.”
That was fair enough in all outward seeming, and Robin felt that
Thatcher, for whatever reason, spoke the truth. Most decidedly
Tommy Thatcher was not keen for trouble. He showed that plainly
enough. It didn’t occur to Robin that his own attitude was aggressive,
that he was taking a wild bull by the horns with a confidence that
made the bull give ground. Thatcher’s words and bearing simply
gave him an opportunity publicly to close that incident in so far as it
could be closed.
“I never went lookin’ for trouble in my life,” Robin said quietly. “I
side-step it if I can. If I can’t——”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Come on, have a drink an’ let her slide,” Thatcher proffered the
peace symbol of the range. Men with bad blood between them didn’t
drink together.
“It happens I’m not drinkin’ to-day, not with anybody,” thus Robin
announced to all and sundry that he was not refusing the olive
branch merely because it came from Thatcher—although he would
have died thirsty rather than drink with a man he felt sure had sped
one of the bullets that snuffed out Tex Matthews’ life. “Thanks, just
the same.”
Probably no one but himself detected the sardonic note in that
phrase of declination.
He walked on up toward the store. He didn’t know Mark Steele’s
whereabouts and he cared less. He wanted to see Adam Sutherland.
The old man was in town. If in seeking the owner of the Block S he
ran across Shining Mark that was as it happened.
He didn’t have to ask a clerk if Sutherland was about. Back by the
bookkeeper’s desk Sutherland occupied his favorite roost deep in an
armchair. The cattleman’s face, round and red about a walrus-like
mustache didn’t alter its normal placidity as Robin approached.
“Hello, kid,” he greeted. “I haven’t seen you for quite a spell.”
“No, and you maybe won’t see me for quite a spell again,” Robin
answered, “if I can do some business with you.”
“Well, shoot,” Sutherland encouraged.
“It’s nothin’ much,” Robin said, “except that I’ve been away for
quite a while. Since I’ve been back and looked the ground over I
reckon I’ll move on again. Nobody loves me and I’m out of a job,” he
finished with a whimsical twist. It was true, but a truth so stated that it
contained for Robin the germ of humor. “I thought maybe I’d sell you
that hundred and sixty I homesteaded on the creek above Mayne’s.”
“Oh, did you? You reckon I’m in the real estate business?”
Sutherland rumbled. “You got your deed to it?”
Robin nodded.
“How much you reckon it’s worth?”
“As much as I can get for it.”
“Well, I might——” Sutherland stopped abruptly. Robin saw the
change of expression cross his face. He heard the front door click.
Out of one corner of his eye he saw Shining Mark come striding
down between the counters.
“You might what?” Robin prompted.
But Sutherland clasped his hands over his rotund stomach and
leaned back in his chair, silent and expressionless as a poker player
nursing a pat hand.
“Hello, Tyler.”
Robin turned his head at Mark’s greeting. The quality of the man’s
voice was the same, arrogant, subtly menacing.
Robin didn’t even trouble to reply. He looked at Mark calmly, an
outward, deceptive calm for within something was beginning to burn,
a flame that he knew he must keep down. It was like being too close
to a venomous snake—only, somehow, for Robin the snake’s fangs
were drawn. He didn’t know why he felt so sure of that but he did. He
was no more afraid of Shining Mark than he was afraid of
Sutherland’s elderly bookkeeper, who was mildness personified,
years of clerical work and domestic infelicity having rendered him
harmless. He gazed at Mark with deliberate, insolent scrutiny.
“They tell me you had an accident with your gun down on Birch,”
he said at length.
“Yeah. Fool thing to do,” Steele growled. It struck Robin that
Shining Mark was a little uneasy.
“Shot yourself with your own gun, eh?” Robin drawled. “Right in
the wishbone, they say. Too bad it wasn’t about six inches higher.
Seems like I heard, too, that it wasn’t quite accidental.”
“What you tryin’ to do? Provoke me?” Steele asked coolly. “You
act like you wanted to open up a package of trouble. I’d sure
accommodate you on the spot if I was heeled. You act real bad when
you happen to find me unarmed.”
“You’re a liar as well as a thief,” Robin took a step toward him. “Do
you want me to prove it?”
Shining Mark’s face flamed. He looked at Robin, then at
Sutherland sitting quietly in his chair, an impassive listener save that
his eyes were narrowly watching both men. Mark stared at Robin.
That youth laughed aloud in his enemy’s face. A whimsical thought
took form in a play on words—steel had lost its temper!
“You’re weakenin’, Mark,” he taunted. “I’ve just come in from
Mayne’s ranch. I said you were a liar and a thief. I say it again.”
“I heard you,” Steele replied, making a visible effort at self-control,
although his lean face was burning. “You don’t need to say anything
to me at all. I’ll drop you in your tracks as soon as I get my hands on
a gun, you mouthy pup. You sure do swell up when you happen to
have a six-gun on your hip and catch me barehanded.”
“I beat you barehanded once, and I can do it again,” Robin kept
his voice low, his tone casual. “I don’t reckon you understand why I
called you a liar. I know a Texas trick or two myself. You——”
He darted a forefinger at Mark and the man jumped backward—
but not so quickly that Robin’s fingers failed to tap smartly against
something hard and outline it briefly under Steele’s coat.
“You got a gun in a Texas holster under your arm,” Robin said
contemptuously. “And you talk about being unarmed. As if anything
you could say or do would throw me off my guard for a second. You
swine! When I think that you put the fear of God in me once, I could
laugh. That’s how dangerous you look to me now.”
Robin took off his soft Stetson and slapped Mark across the face.
Mark put up his hand and backed away. Behind him Robin heard
Adam Sutherland grunt, heard the scrape of his chair legs. Robin
laughed again. He remembered the dead cows in Birch Creek. He
remembered Tex Matthews’ stiffened body across a bloody saddle,
borne by a tired horse, led by a tired rider through a long winter
night. He remembered with a bitter clearness Steele swinging his
spurred foot from a table in a line camp and saying cold-bloodedly, “I
hate to muss up a perfectly good camp but you’ve bothered me long
enough.”
With those pictures blazing bright in his memory Robin had to
laugh—or cry. He did laugh, looking straight into Steele’s burning
eyes, but there was no mirth in the sound.
“I’ve said my say,” he kept his voice without passion. “If a gun
under your arm isn’t good enough for you, go buckle one on your
hip. I’m not even going to bother looking for you, Steele. That’s how
much I think of you. I won’t waste no time nor talk on you after this. If
you want my scalp—and you’ve been after it a long time—you’ll have
to come after me. If you jump me you won’t be able to say it was an
accident with your own gun a second time.”
Steele turned and walked away. Once he hesitated, seemed
about to turn. Robin stood watching him, one hand resting on the
desk, a half-smoked cigarette in his fingers. And when Steele
passed through the swinging doors Robin followed, his thought and
vision so concentrated on the man ahead that he did not hear
Sutherland call after him:
“Hey, Tyler. Come back here. I want to talk to you.”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE SEAT OF THE MIGHTY