Part 1 (1/2)

The Mucker

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

PART I

CHAPTER I BILLY BYRNE

BILLY BYRNE was a product of the streets and alleys of Chicago's great West Side From Halsted to Robey, and from Grand Avenue to Lake Street there was scarce a bartender whom Billy knew not by his first name And, in proportion to their number which was considerably less, he knew the patrolmen and plain clothes arten education had co of older boys and ht else to occupy their time, and as the brideas the only place in which they ever held a job for more than a day or two, they had considerable ti

They were pickpockets and second-story , and all were muckers, ready to insult the first woer who did not appear too burly By night they plied their real vocations By day they sat in the alley behind the feedstore and drank beer from a battered tin pail

The question of labor involved in transporting the pail, e it, full, to the alley back of the feed-store was solved by the presence of ad, wide-eyed and thrilled, about these heroes of their childish lives

Billy Byrne, at six, was rushi+ng the can for this noble band, and incidentally picking up his knowledge of life and the rudiloried in the fact that he was personally 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 Twenty-eighth Precinct Police Station

The kindergarten period lasted until Billy was ten; then he cos and selling them to a fence who ran a junkshop on Lincoln Street near Kinzie

Froher grade, so that at twelve he was robbing freight cars in the yards along Kinzie Street, and it was about this same time that he coainst the jaw of a fellow-man

He had had his boyish scraps with his fellows off and on ever since he could reht came when he elve He had had an altercation with an erstwhile pal over the division of the returns fro was all present, and as words quickly gave place to blows, as they have a habit of doing in certain sections of the West Side, theabout the contestants

The battle was a long one The tere rolling about in the dust of the alley quite as often as they were upon their feet exchanging blows

There was nothing fair, nor decent, nor scientific about their ed and bit and tore They used knees and elbows and feet, and but for the tiers at the psychologicaldefeat As it was the other boy went down, and for a week Billy re the report from the hospital

When word came that the patient would live, Billy felt an immense load lifted from his shoulders, for he dreaded arrest and experience with the law that he had learned from childhood to deride and hate Of course there was the loss of prestige that would naturally have accrued to hiuy that croaked Sheehan”; but there is always a fly in the ointhed and came out of his temporary retire, and the result of that mental activity was a determination to learn to handle his mitts scientifically--people of the West Side do not have hands; they are equipped by Nature with mitts and dukes A few have paws and flippers

He had no opportunity to realize his new dreahbor's son surprised his little world by suddenly developing froht

The young , as his escutcheon was defiled with a record of steady e lessons his young neighbor had taken, or of the work he had done at the don gymnasium of Larry Hilht was unknown to the char, Billy knew him fairly well by reason of the proximity of their respective parental back yards, and so when the gla lory

He sawwinter He accolorious occasion occupied a position in the cohter toured, Billy continued to hang around Hil odd jobs, the while he picked up pugilistic lore, and absorbed the spirit of the ga with the rudiments and finer points of its science, aled Once he had longed to shi+ne as a gunhter; but the old gang still saw ure about the saloon corners along Grand Avenue and Lake Street

During this period Billy neglected the box cars on Kinzie Street, partially because he felt that he was fitted for nified employment, and as well for the fact that the railroad company had doubled the number of watchmen in the yards; but there were ti for excitement and adventure These times were usually coincident with an acute financial depression in Billy's change pocket, and then he would fare forth in the still watches of the night, with a couple of boon companions and roll a souse, or stick up a saloon

It was upon an occasion of this nature that an event occurred which was fated later to change the entire course of Billy Byrne's life Upon the West Side the older gangs are jealous of the sanctity of their own territory Outsiders do not trespass with impunity From Halsted to Robey, and fro, to which Billy had been alht say Kelly owned the feed-store back of which the gang had loafed for years, and though himself a respectable businessman his name had been attached to the pack of hoodlums who held forth at his back door as the easiestits reat territory were the natural enes of old protected the deer of their great forests fro felt it incuuard the lives and property which they considered theirs by divine right It is doubtful that they thought of the matter in just this way, but the effect was the same

And so it was that as Billy Byrne wended ho the cash drawer of old Schneider's saloon and locking the weeping Schneider in his own ice box, he was deeply grieved and angered to see three rank outsiders fro Patrolman Stanley Lasky with his own baton, the while they simultaneously strove to kick in his ribs with their heavy boots