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 bartenderwhom Billy knew not by his first name. And, in proportion to their number which wasconsiderably less, he knew the patrolmen and plain clothes men equally as well, but not sopleasantly. His kindergarten education had commenced in an alley back of a feed-store. Here a gangof older boys and men were wont to congregate at such times as they had naught else tooccupy their time, and as the bridewell was the only place in which they ever held a job formore 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 weremuckers, ready to insult the first woman who passed, or pick a quarrel with any strangerwho did not appear too burly. By night they plied their real vocations. By day they sat in thealley behind the feedstore and drank beer from a battered tin pail. The question of labor involved in transporting the pail, empty, to the saloon across thestreet, and returning it, full, to the alley back of the feed-store was solved by the presenceof admiring and envious little boys of the neighborhood who hung, wide-eyed and thrilled, about these heroes of their childish lives. Billy Byrne, at six, was rushing the can for this noble band, and incidentally picking uphis knowledge of life and the rudiments of his education. He gloried in the fact that he waspersonally acquainted with "Eddie" Welch, and that with his own ears he had heard "Eddie"tell the gang how he stuck up a guy on West Lake Street within fifty yards of the Twentyeighth Precinct Police Station. The kindergarten period lasted until Billy was ten; then he commenced "swiping" brassfaucets from vacant buildings and selling them to a fence who ran a junkshop on LincolnStreet near Kinzie. From this man he obtained the hint that graduated him to a higher grade, so that attwelve he was robbing freight cars in the yards along Kinzie Street, and it was about thissame time that he commenced to find pleasure in the feel of his fist against the jaw of afellow-man