Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Mucker Edgar Rice Burroughs

BILLY BYRNE was a product of the streets and alleys of Chicago's great West Side. FromHalsted to Robey, and from Grand Avenue to Lake Street there was scarce a bartender whom Billyknew not by his first name. And, in proportion to their number which was considerably less, heknew the patrolmen and plain clothes men equally as well, but not so pleasantly. His kindergarten education had commenced in an alley back of a feed-store. Here a gang of olderboys and men were wont to congregate at such times as they had naught else to occupy their time, and as the bridewell was the only place in which they ever held a job for more than a day or two, they had considerable time to devote to congregating. They were pickpockets and second-story men, made and in the making, and all were muckers, ready to insult the first woman who passed, or pick a quarrel with any stranger who did not appeartoo burly. By night they plied their real vocations. By day they sat in the alley behind the feedstoreand drank beer from a battered tin pail. The question of labor involved in transporting the pail, empty, to the saloon across the street, andreturning it, full, to the alley back of the feed-store was solved by the presence of admiring andenvious little boys of the neighborhood who hung, wide-eyed and thrilled, about these heroes oftheir childish lives. Billy Byrne, at six, was rushing the can for this noble band, and incidentally picking up hisknowledge of life and the rudiments of his education. He gloried in the fact that he was personallyacquainted with "Eddie" Welch, and that with his own ears he had heard "Eddie" tell the gang howhe stuck up a guy on West Lake Street within fifty yards of the Twenty-eighth Precinct PoliceStation. The kindergarten period lasted until Billy was ten; then he commenced "swiping" brass faucetsfrom vacant buildings and selling them to a fence who ran a junkshop on Lincoln Street near Kinzie. From this man he obtained the hint that graduated him to a higher grade, so that at twelve he wasrobbing freight cars in the yards along Kinzie Street, and it was about this same time that hecommenced to find pleasure in the feel of his fist against the jaw of a fellow-man. He had had his boyish scraps with his fellows off and on ever since he could remember; but hisfirst real fight came when he was twelve. He had had an altercation with an erstwhile pal over thedivision of the returns from some freight-car booty. The gang was all present, and as words quicklygave place to blows, as they have a habit of doing in certain sections of the West Side, the men andboys formed a rough ring about the contestants. The battle was a long one. The two were rolling about in the dust of the alley quite as often asthey were upon their feet exchanging blows. There was nothing fair, nor decent, nor scientific abouttheir methods. They gouged and bit and tore. They used knees and elbows and feet, and but for thetimely presence of a brickbat beneath his fingers at the psychological moment Billy Byrne wouldhave gone down to humiliating defeat. As it was the other boy went down, and for a week Billyremained hidden by one of the gang pending the report from the hospital.