The Mucker | Page 3

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THE
MUCKER
Edgar Rice Burroughs

BALLANTINE BOOKS . NEW YORK

THE MUCKER: Originally published serially in All-Story Cavalier
Weekly. Copyright (c) 1914, by The Frank A. Munsey Co.
THE RETURN OF THE MUCKER: Sequel to THE MUCKER.
Originally published serially in All-Story Weekly. Copyright (c) 1916,
by The Frank A. Munsey Co.
First Ballantine Edition: January, 1966
Manufactured in the United States of America
BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC. 101 Fifth Avenue, New York, New

York 10003

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
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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 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 older boys 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 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, empty, to the
saloon across the street, and returning it, full, to the alley back of the
feed-store was solved by the presence of 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 up his knowledge of life and the rudiments of his
education. He gloried 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 commenced
"swiping" brass faucets from 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 was robbing freight cars in the yards along Kinzie
Street, and it was about this same time that he commenced 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 his first real fight came when he was twelve. He
had had an altercation with an erstwhile pal over the division of the
returns from some freight-car booty. The gang 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, the men and boys 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 as they were upon their feet exchanging blows.
There was nothing fair, nor decent, nor scientific about their methods.
They gouged and bit and tore. They used knees and elbows and feet,
and but for the timely presence of a brickbat beneath his fingers at the
psychological moment Billy Byrne would have gone down to
humiliating defeat. As it was the other boy went down, and for a week
Billy remained hidden by one of the gang pending 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