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By Root 10447 0

janitor, came out and told them to make less noise. After he turned his back, Hennessey made faces at him and the guys laughed. George turned around and caught Three-Star. He came back, and told Hennessey that if he caught him on the premises again, he’d break his dirty neck. When George had gone, they all talked of what a crab he was. Then the older guys got Hennessey and O’Neill tipper-tapping again. Studs got in back of Danny, and Bill stood behind Hennessey. They shoved simultaneously. The two punks batted their domes together and got sore. They started fighting. Hennessey lowered his head, and rushed, swinging wildly. Danny stood off and met each rush with a stiff left uppercut. He was cleaning on Three-Star for fair, much to the delight of the gang. They all yelled too loudly. George appeared on the roof and doused a pail of water on them; everybody but Studs and Johnny O’Brien got wet. They stood there, cursing up at George. He stood on the roof and laughed down at them. Then he got sore again and yelled for them to beat it while the beating was good. They knew George, so they straggled away. They went back in the alley, and the fight was resumed. Danny cut Hennessey up some more. Three-Star quit. He went off bawling that he’d get O’Neill alone some day. When he was a good distance away, he swore at them. They didn’t shag him, because he was too hard to catch.

The next day, when they came around Indiana, they found themselves all roundly cursed in chalked markings that extended the whole length of the block. And they met George with a policeman. They were shown the mail boxes in George’s two buildings on the corner. Every one of them had been smashed with a hammer or a hatchet. They all got leery, but they had alibis, and the cop only took their names and went around to their homes to find out what time they had come in.

They knew who did it, but they didn’t want to be snitchers. They went back to Johnny’s yard and noticed that two side windows of the basement had been broken. They armed themselves with clubs and sticks and marched forth like an army going to war. But Hennessey was nowhere to be found.

II

When the guys were out looking for Hennessey, Johnny O’Brien told Studs to come along with him, so they ditched the gang. They returned to Indiana, and met old man O’Brien. He took them with him in his Chalmers. He was a husky, grayish man, starting to get a goodly paunch. They went first to the O’Brien coal yards at Sixty-second and Wabash, and then they toured the south side while O’Brien checked up on coal deliveries.

As they were driving east on Sixty-third, old man O’Brien said, his voice exaggeratedly rough:

“Who’s the hardest guy in the gang?”

“Studs,” said Johnny.

Studs blushed a little, and wanted to say something to make it appear like he wasn’t so awful tough after all, but he was secretly pleased. He sat there, trying to think of something to say, and he couldn’t get hold of a word.

“Well, some day, Studs, let’s you and I mix. I’m not so young as I used to be, and maybe I’ll be a little slow and will get winded, but just let’s you and I mix. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll tie my knees together, have one arm tied behind my back, and throw a gunny sack over my head. Now is that square?” Old Man O’Brien said.

They laughed. Studs thought that Old Man O’Brien was a pretty tough one when he got going. He remembered that night when they had all been standing at the corner of Fifty-eighth and Indiana. They had just been talking there, not doing a thing out of the way. And MacNamara, the lousy cop, came around. He blew his bazoo off, and told them to get a move on, and not be hanging around corners molesting the peace. They said they weren’t doing anything. He blew his bazoo off again, and told them not to talk back to him or he’d run the whole damn bunch of them in. He said they weren’t no good anyhow, and wanted to know what kind of fathers they had that would let them be out on the streets at night, molesting decent people and disturbing the peace. He told them to get a move on, and he grabbed Johnny