The Mucker quotes

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.

He also had learned that there is no better time to put a bluff of this nature across than when the victim is suffering from the aftereffects of whiskey and a drug—mentality, vitality, and courage are then at their lowest ebb.

A brave man often is reduced to the pitiful condition of a yellow dog when nausea sits astride his stomach.

But the mate was not acquainted with Billy Byrne of Kelly’s gang. Billy’s brain was befuddled, so that it took some time for an idea to wriggle its way through, but his courage was all there, and all to the good.

He was a barroom brawler, and a saloon-corner loafer. He was all that was dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of a brave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward.

He was what he was because of training and environment.

He knew no other methods; no other code. Whatever the meager ethics of his kind he would have lived up to them to the death.

Theriere was conscious and but little the worse for his experience, though badly bruised. He looked at the mucker in astonishment as the two faced each other in the cabin.

“I don’t know why you did it,” said Theriere.

“Neither do I,” replied Billy Byrne.

“I don’t know why you did it,” said Theriere.

“Neither do I,” replied Billy Byrne.

“I shall not forget it, Byrne,” said the officer.

For some unaccountable reason he had felt a sudden compunction because of his thoughtless remark. What in the world was coming over him, he wondered.

He’d be wearing white pants and playing lawn tennis presently if he continued to grow much softer and more unmanly.

So the three set out through the jungle, following a trail which led around to the north of the village. Theriere walked ahead with the boy’s arm in his grasp. Byrne followed closely behind.

Billy Byrne opened his eyes a little wider, turning them until they rested on the beautiful face of the girl so close to his.

“Mr. Byrne!” he ejaculated in disgust. “Forget it. Wot do youse tink I am, one of dose paper-collar dudes?”

Then he sat up. Blood was flowing from a wound in his chest, saturating his shirt, and running slowly to the earth floor.

“Don’t,” whispered the girl. “Please don’t, you frighten me.”

A week ago Billy Byrne would have laughed at such a plea.

Doubtless, too, he would have struck the girl in the face for her resistance.

“I’m afraid you’ve hit it off about right,” he replied with a grin. “I don’t want to be rescued, and I am very much afraid of what lies before—me.”

“I’m going to lose you, any way you look at it, and⁠—and⁠—oh, can’t you see that I love you?” he blurted out, despite all his good intentions.

Barbara Harding looked at him for a moment, and then she did the one thing that could have hurt him most—she laughed.

The latter was short and slender. The larger man looked as though he might have eaten him at a single mouthful; but the camper did not flinch.

“You pain me,” he said. “You induce within me a severe and highly localized pain, and furthermore I don’t like your whiskers.”

With which apparently irrelevant remark he seized the matted beard of the larger tramp and struck the fellow a quick, sharp blow in the face. Instantly the fellow’s companion was upon him;

“It don’t get under the ribs like those verses of yours, though, bo,” he returned.

“It seems to have insinuated itself beneath this guy’s thick skull,” replied the poetical one, “and it’s a cinch my verses, nor any other would ever get there.”

The tramp who had plumbed the depths of the creek’s foot of water and two feet of soft mud was crawling ashore.

“Now please hurry,” she urged. “I don’t want you to be caught—even if you are a murderer. I wish you weren’t though.”

“I’m not,” said Billy; “but de law says I am an’ what de law says, goes.”

He turned toward the doorway with Bridge, calling a goodbye to the woman, but as he stepped out upon the veranda the dust of a fast-moving automobile appeared about a bend in the road a half-mile from the house.

Sometimes you say ‘that’ and ‘dat’ in the same sentence. Your conversational clashes are numerous. Surely something or someone has cramped your original style.”

“I was born and brought up on ‘dat,’ ” explained Billy. “She taught me the other line of talk. Sometimes I forget. I had about twenty years of the other and only one of hers, and twenty to one is a long shot⁠—more apt to lose than win.”

“ ‘She,’ I take it, is Penelope,” mused Bridge, half to himself. “She must have been a fine girl.”

“Most of this talk gets by me,” he said. “I ain’t jerry to all the Dago jabber yet, though I’ve copped off a little of it in the past two weeks. Put me wise to the gink’s lay.”

“Elementary, Watson, elementary,” replied Bridge. “We are captured by bandits, and they are going to take us to their delightful chief who will doubtless have us shot at sunrise.”

“Bandits?” snapped Billy, with a sneer. “Youse don’t call dese little runts bandits?”

“Bandits?” snapped Billy, with a sneer. “Youse don’t call dese little runts bandits?”

“Baby bandits, Billy, baby bandits,” replied Bridge.

“An’ you’re goin’ to stan’ fer lettin’ ’em pull off this rough stuff without handin’ ’em a comeback?” demanded Byrne.

“I’ll get these guys, pal—watch me,” he said.

“I am with thee, William!⁠—horse, foot, and artillery,” laughed Bridge.

“Which reminds me,” said Billy, “that I have an ace-in-the-hole—the boobs never frisked me.”

Just think! Some night the stars will gleam Upon a cold gray stone, And trace a name with silver beam, And lo! ’twill be your own.”

“You’re a cheerful guy,” was Billy’s only comment.

“What makes you think that, bo?” demanded Billy.

“I do not think, señor,” replied Miguel; “I know.”

“Well,” said Billy, “we’ll wait and see.”

“Huh?” grunted Grayson, and then to Bridge, “Well, what the devil do you want?”

“A job,” replied Bridge, “or, to be more explicit, I need a job⁠—far be it from me to wish one.”

The Easterner smiled. Grayson looked a bit mystified—and irritated.

“Well, I hain’t got none,” he snapped. “We don’t need nobody now unless it might be a good puncher—one who can rope and ride.”

“I can ride,” replied Bridge, “as is evidenced by the fact that you now see me astride a horse.”

“I said ride,” said Grayson. “Any fool can sit on a horse. No, I hain’t got nothin’, an’ I’m busy now. Hold on!” he exclaimed as though seized by a sudden inspiration.

Bridge stretched luxuriously. “ ‘There,’ ” he repeated. “I’ve been searching for there for many years; but for some reason I can never get away from here.

About two weeks of any place on earth and that place is just plain here to me, and I’m longing once again for there.

”

“Then why don’t you do it?” snapped Grayson.

“Mr. Bridge is entertaining me,” interrupted the girl, before Grayson could make any rejoinder.

“It is my fault—I took him from his work. You don’t mind, do you, Mr. Grayson?”

“You’re all right, old man,” he whispered. “I know you’re lyin’ an’ so do you; but it makes me feel better anyway to have you say them things.”

Billy felt as one who has been caught stealing from a blind man.

The only adequate reply of which he could think was, “Aw, shucks!”

Billy Byrne was bending low to catch his feeble words, and when the voice trailed out into nothingness he lowered the tousled red head to the hard earth and turned away.

Could it be that the thing which glistened on the eyelid of the toughest guy on the West Side was a tear?

The afternoon waned and night came, but it brought to Billy Byrne neither renewed attack nor succor. The bullet which had dropped him momentarily had but creased his forehead.