The Mucker | Page 4

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 him could he have been pointed out as the "guy that croaked
Sheehan"; but there is always a fly in the ointment, and Billy only
sighed and came out of his temporary retirement.
That battle started Billy to thinking, 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 dream for several years; but
when he was about seventeen a neighbor's son surprised his little world
by suddenly developing from an unknown teamster into a locally
famous light-weight.
The young man never had been affiliated with the gang, as his
escutcheon was defiled with a record of steady employment. So Billy
had known nothing of the sparring lessons his young neighbor had
taken, or of the work he had done at the down-town gymnasium of
Larry Hilmore.
Now it happened that while the new light-weight was unknown to the
charmed circle of the gang, Billy knew him fairly well by reason of the
proximity of their respective parental back yards, and so when the
glamour of pugilistic success haloed the young man Billy lost no time
in basking in the light of reflected glory.
He saw much of his new hero all the following winter. He accompanied
him to many mills, and on one glorious occasion occupied a position in
the coming champion's corner. When the prize fighter toured, Billy
continued to hang around Hilmore's place, running errands and doing
odd jobs, the while he picked up pugilistic lore, and absorbed the spirit

of the game along with the rudiments and finer points of its science,
almost unconsciously. Then his ambition changed. Once he had longed
to shine as a gunman; now he was determined to become a prize fighter;
but the old gang still saw much of him, and he was a familiar figure
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 more dignified
employment, and as well for the fact that the railroad company had
doubled the number of watchmen in the yards; but there were times
when he felt the old yearning 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 from Lake to Grand lay the broad hunting preserve of
Kelly's gang, to which Billy had been almost born, one might 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
easiest means of locating and identifying its motley members.
The police and citizenry of this great territory were the natural enemies
and prey of Kelly's gang, but as the kings of old protected the deer of
their great forests from poachers, so Kelly's gang felt it incumbent upon
them to safeguard 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 homeward alone in the wee
hours of the morning after emptying 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 from Twelfth

Street beating Patrolman Stanley Lasky with his own baton, the while
they simultaneously strove to kick in his ribs with their heavy boots.
Now Lasky was no friend of Billy Byrne; but the officer had been born
and raised in the district and was attached to the Twenty-eighth
Precinct Station on Lake Street near Ashland Avenue, and so was part
and parcel of the natural possession of the gang. Billy felt that it was
entirely ethical to beat up a cop, provided you confined your efforts to
those of your