The Mucker

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Produced by Judith Boss

  THE MUCKER

  By Edgar Rice Burroughs

  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 publishedserially in All-Story Weekly. Copyright (c) 1916, by The Frank A. MunseyCo.

  First Ballantine Edition: January, 1966

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC. 101 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003

  PART I.

  CHAPTER I. BILLY BYRNE

  BILLY BYRNE was a product of the streets and alleys of Chicago's greatWest Side. From Halsted to Robey, and from Grand Avenue to Lake Streetthere was scarce a bartender whom Billy knew not by his first name. And,in proportion to their number which was considerably less, he knew thepatrolmen and plain clothes men equally as well, but not so pleasantly.

  His kindergarten education had commenced in an alley back of afeed-store. Here a gang of older boys and men were wont to congregateat such times as they had naught else to occupy their time, and as thebridewell was the only place in which they ever held a job for more thana day or two, they had considerable time to devote to congregating.

  They were pickpockets and second-story men, made and in the making, andall were muckers, ready to insult the first woman who passed, or picka quarrel with any stranger who did not appear too burly. By night theyplied their real vocations. By day they sat in the alley behind thefeedstore and drank beer from a battered tin pail.

  The question of labor involved in transporting the pail, empty, to thesaloon across the street, and returning it, full, to the alley back ofthe feed-store was solved by the presence of admiring and envious littleboys of the neighborhood who hung, wide-eyed and thrilled, about theseheroes of their childish lives.

  Billy Byrne, at six, was rushing the can for this noble band, andincidentally picking up his knowledge of life and the rudiments of hiseducation. He gloried in the fact that he was personally acquainted with"Eddie" Welch, and that with his own ears he had heard "Eddie" tell thegang how he stuck up a guy on West Lake Street within fifty yards of theTwenty-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 afence 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 KinzieStreet, and it was about this same time that he commenced to findpleasure 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 hecould remember; but his first real fight came when he was twelve. Hehad had an altercation with an erstwhile pal over the division of thereturns from some freight-car booty. The gang was all present, and aswords quickly gave place to blows, as they have a habit of doing incertain sections of the West Side, the men and boys formed a rough ringabout the contestants.

  The battle was a long one. The two were rolling about in the dust ofthe 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, andbut for the timely presence of a brickbat beneath his fingers at thepsychological moment Billy Byrne would have gone down to humiliatingdefeat. As it was the other boy went down, and for a week Billy remainedhidden by one of the gang pending the report from the hospital.

  When word came that the patient would live, Billy felt an immense loadlifted from his shoulders, for he dreaded arrest and experience withthe law that he had learned from childhood to deride and hate. Of coursethere was the loss of prestige that would naturally have accrued to himcould he have been pointed out as the "guy that croaked Sheehan"; butthere is always a fly in the ointment, and Billy only sighed and cameout of his temporary retirement.

  That battle started Billy to thinking, and the result of thatmental activity was a determination to learn to handle his mittsscientifically--people of the West Side do not have hands; they areequipped by Nature with mitts and dukes. A few have paws and flippers.

  He had no opportunity to realize his new dream for several years; butwhen he was about seventeen a neighbor's son surprised his little worldby suddenly developing from an unknown teamster into a locally famouslight-weight.

  The young man never had been affiliated with the gang, as his escutcheonwas defiled with a record of steady employment. So Billy had knownnothing of the sparring lessons his young neighbor had taken, or of thework he had done at the down-town gymnasium of Larry Hilmore.

  Now it happened that while the new light-weight was unknown to thecharmed circle of the gang, Billy knew him fairly well by reason ofthe proximity of their respective parental back yards, and so when theglamour of pugilistic success haloed the young man Billy lost no time inbasking in the light of reflected glory.

  He saw much of his new hero all the following winter. He accompanied himto many mills, and on one glorious occasion occupied a position in thecoming champion's corner. When the prize fighter toured, Billy continuedto hang around Hilmore's place, running errands and doing odd jobs, thewhile he picked up pugilistic lore, and absorbed the spirit of thegame along with the rudiments and finer points of its science, almostunconsciously. Then his ambition changed. Once he had longed to shine asa gunman; now he was determined to become a prize fighter; but theold gang still saw much of him, and he was a familiar figure about thesaloon 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 dignifiedemployment, and as well for the fact that the railroad company haddoubled the number of watchmen in the yards; but there were times whenhe felt the old yearning for excitement and adventure. These times wereusually coincident with an acute financial depression in Billy's changepocket, 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 wasfated later to change the entire course of Billy Byrne's life. Uponthe West Side the older gangs are jealous of the sanctity of their ownterritory. Outsiders do not trespass with impunity. From Halsted toRobey, and from Lake to Grand lay the broad hunting preserve of Kelly'sgang, to which Billy had been almost born, one might say. Kelly ownedthe feed-store back of which the gang had loafed for years, and thoughhimself a respectable businessman his name had been attached to thepack of hoodlums who held forth at his back door as the easiest means oflocating and identifying its motley members.

  The police and citizenry of this great territory were the naturalenemies and prey of Kelly's gang, but as the kings of old protectedthe deer of their great forests from poachers, so Kelly's gang feltit incumbent upon them to safeguard the lives and property which theyconsidered theirs by divine right. It is doubtful that they thought ofthe 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 hoursof the morning after emptying the cash drawer of old Schneider's saloonand locking the weeping Schneider in his own ice box, he was deeplygrieved and angered to see three rank outsiders from Twelfth Streetbeating Patrolman Stanley Lasky with his own baton, the while theysimultaneously strove to kick in his ribs with their heavy boots.

  Now Lasky was no friend of Billy Byrne; but the officer had beenborn and raised in the district and was attached to the Twenty-eighthPrecinct Station on Lake Street near Ashland Avenue, and so was partand parcel of the natural possession of the gang. Billy felt that it wasent
irely ethical to beat up a cop, provided you confined your effortsto those of your own district; but for a bunch of yaps from southof Twelfth Street to attempt to pull off any such coarse work in hisbailiwick--why it was unthinkable.

  A hero and rescuer of lesser experience than Billy Byrne wouldhave rushed melodramatically into the midst of the fray, and in allprobability have had his face pushed completely through the back of hishead, for the guys from Twelfth Street were not of the rah-rah-boy typeof hoodlum--they were bad men, with an upper case B. So Billy creptstealthily along in the shadows until he was quite close to them, andbehind them. On the way he had gathered up a cute little granite pavingblock, than which there is nothing in the world harder, not even aTwelfth Street skull. He was quite close now to one of the men--he whowas wielding the officer's club to such excellent disadvantage to theofficer--and then he raised the paving block only to lower it silentlyand suddenly upon the back of that unsuspecting head--"and then therewere two."

  Before the man's companions realized what had happened Billy hadpossessed himself of the fallen club and struck one of them a blinding,staggering blow across the eyes. Then number three pulled his gun andfired point-blank at Billy. The bullet tore through the mucker's leftshoulder. It would have sent a more highly organized and nervouslyinclined man to the pavement; but Billy was neither highly organized nornervously inclined, so that about the only immediate effect it had uponhim was to make him mad--before he had been but peeved--peeved at therank crust that had permitted these cheap-skates from south of TwelfthStreet to work his territory.

  Thoroughly aroused, Billy was a wonder. From a long line of burlyancestors he had inherited the physique of a prize bull. From earliestchildhood he had fought, always unfairly, so that he knew all the tricksof street fighting. During the past year there had been added to Billy'snatural fighting ability and instinct a knowledge of the scientificend of the sport. The result was something appalling--to the gink fromTwelfth Street.

  Before he knew whether his shot had killed Billy his gun had beenwrenched from his hand and flung across the street; he was down on thegranite with a hand as hard as the paving block scrambling his facialattractions beyond hope of recall.

  By this time Patrolman Lasky had staggered to his feet, and mostopportunely at that, for the man whom Billy had dazed with the club wasrecovering. Lasky promptly put him to sleep with the butt of the gunthat he had been unable to draw when first attacked, then he turned toassist Billy. But it was not Billy who needed assistance--it was thegentleman from Bohemia. With difficulty Lasky dragged Billy from hisprey.

  "Leave enough of him for the inquest," pleaded Lasky.

  When the wagon arrived Billy had disappeared, but Lasky had recognizedhim and thereafter the two had nodded pleasantly to each other upon suchoccasions as they chanced to meet upon the street.

  Two years elapsed before the event transpired which proved a crisis inBilly's life. During this period his existence had been much the same asbefore. He had collected what was coming to him from careless and lessmuscular citizens. He had helped to stick up a half-dozen saloons. Hehad robbed the night men in two elevated stations, and for a while hadbeen upon the pay-roll of a certain union and done strong arm work inall parts of the city for twenty-five dollars a week.

  By day he was a general utility man about Larry Hilmore's boxingacademy, and time and time again Hilmore urged him to quit drinkingand live straight, for he saw in the young giant the makings of a greatheavy-weight; but Billy couldn't leave the booze alone, and so the bestthat he got was an occasional five spot for appearing in preliminarybouts with third- and fourth-rate heavies and has-beens; but during thethree years that he had hung about Hilmore's he had acquired an enviableknowledge of the manly art of self-defense.

  On the night that things really began to happen in the life of BillyByrne that estimable gentleman was lolling in front of a saloon at thecorner of Lake and Robey. The dips that congregated nightly there underthe protection of the powerful politician who owned the place werecommencing to assemble. Billy knew them all, and nodded to them as theypassed him. He noted surprise in the faces of several as they saw himstanding there. He wondered what it was all about, and determined to askthe next man who evinced even mute wonderment at his presence what waseating him.

  Then Billy saw a harness bull strolling toward him from the east. It wasLasky. When Lasky saw Billy he too opened his eyes in surprise, and whenhe came quite close to the mucker he whispered something to him, thoughhe kept his eyes straight ahead as though he had not seen Billy at all.

  In deference to the whispered request Billy presently strolled aroundthe corner toward Walnut Street, but at the alley back of the saloon heturned suddenly in. A hundred yards up the alley he found Lasky in theshadow of a telephone pole.

  "Wotinell are you doin' around here?" asked the patrolman. "Didn't youknow that Sheehan had peached?"

  Two nights before old man Schneider, goaded to desperation by therepeated raids upon his cash drawer, had shown fight when he againhad been invited to elevate his hands, and the holdup men had shot himthrough the heart. Sheehan had been arrested on suspicion.

  Billy had not been with Sheehan that night. As a matter of fact he neverhad trained with him, for, since the boyish battle that the two hadwaged, there had always been ill feeling between them; but with Lasky'swords Billy knew what had happened.

  "Sheehan says I done it, eh?" he questioned.

  "That's what he says."

  "I wasn't within a mile of Schneider's that night," protested Billy.

  "The Lieut thinks different," said Lasky. "He'd be only too glad to soakyou; for you've always been too slick to get nicked before. Orders isout to get you, and if I were you I'd beat it and beat it quick. I don'thave to tell you why I'm handing you this, but it's all I can do foryou. Now take my advice and make yourself scarce, though you'll haveto go some to make your get-away now--every man on the force has yourdescription by this time."

  Billy turned without a word and walked east in the alley toward LincolnStreet. Lasky returned to Robey Street. In Lincoln Street Billy walkednorth to Kinzie. Here he entered the railroad yards. An hour later hewas bumping out of town toward the West on a fast freight. Three weekslater he found himself in San Francisco. He had no money, but themethods that had so often replenished his depleted exchequer at home hefelt would serve the same purpose here.

  Being unfamiliar with San Francisco, Billy did not know where best towork, but when by accident he stumbled upon a street where there weremany saloons whose patrons were obviously seafaring men Billy wasdistinctly elated. What could be better for his purpose than a drunkensailor?

  He entered one of the saloons and stood watching a game of cards,or thus he seemed to be occupied. As a matter of fact his eyes wereconstantly upon the alert, roving about the room to wherever a man wasin the act of paying for a round of drinks that a fat wallet might belocated.

  Presently one that filled him with longing rewarded his careful watch.The man was sitting at a table a short distance from Billy. Two othermen were with him. As he paid the waiter from a well-filled pocketbookhe looked up to meet Billy's eyes upon him.

  With a drunken smile he beckoned to the mucker to join them. Billy feltthat Fate was overkind to him, and he lost no time in heeding her call.A moment later he was sitting at the table with the three sailors, andhad ordered a drop of red-eye.

  The stranger was very lavish in his entertainment. He scarcely waitedfor Billy to drain one glass before he ordered another, and once afterBilly had left the table for a moment he found a fresh drink awaitinghim when he returned--his host had already poured it for him.

  It was this last drink that did the business.