Imagination rules the world. Butch, having imagination, extended himself. Already a Fagin, Butch became a posser and bought stolen goods for himself. Often, too, he acted as a melina and bought for others. Thus Butch had three strings to his business bow. He was getting rich and at the same time keeping out of the fingers of the bulls. This caused him to be much looked up to and envied, throughout the length and breadth of Gangland.
Butch was thus prosperous and prospering when it occurred to him to fall in love. Harry the Soldier was the Mark Antony of the Five Points, his Cleopatra the Darby Kid. There existed divers reasons for adoring the Darby Kid. There was her lustrous eyes, her coral mouth, her rounded cheek, her full figure, her gifts as a shop lifter. As a graceful crown to these attractions, the Darby Kid could pick a pocket with the best wire that ever touched a leather. In no wise had she been named the Darby Kid for nothing. Not even Mollie Squint was her superior at getting the bundle of a boob. They said, and with truth, that those soft, deep, lustrous eyes could look a sucker over, while yet that unconscious sucker was ten feet away, and locate the keck wherein he carried his roll. Is it astonishing then that the heart of Butch went down on its willing knees to the Darby Kid?
Another matter:—Wasn't the Darby Kid the chosen one of Harry the Soldier? Was not Harry a Five Pointer? Had not Butch, elbow to elbow, with his great chief, Eastman, fought the Five Pointers in the battle at Worth and Center? It was a triumph, indeed, to win the heart of the Darby Kid. It was twice a triumph to steal that heart away from Harry the Soldier.
The Darby Kid crossed over from Harry the Soldier to Butch, and brought her love along. Thereafter her smiles were for Butch, her caresses for Butch, her touches for Butch. Harry the Soldier was left desolate.
Harry the Soldier was a gon of merit and deserved eminence. That he had been an inmate not only of the House of Refuge but the Elmira Reformatory, should show you that he was a past-master at his art. His steady partner was Dopey Benny. With one to relieve the other in the exacting duties of stinger, and a couple of good stalls to put up an effective back, trust them, at fair or circus or theatre break, to make leathers, props and thimbles fly.
It was Gangland decision that for Butch to win the Darby Kid away from Harry the Soldier, even as Paris aforetime took the lovely Helen from her Menelaus, touched not alone the honor of Harry but the honor of the Five Points. Harry must revenge himself. Still more must he revenge the Five Points. It had become a case of Butch's life or his. On no milder terms could Harry sustain himself in Gangland first circles. His name else would be despised anywhere and everywhere that the fair and the brave were wont to come together and unbuckle socially.
Butch, tall and broad and strong, smooth of face, arched of nose, was a born hawk of battle. Harry the Soldier, dark, short, of no muscular power, was not the physical equal of Butch. Butch looked forward with confidence to the upcome.
“An' yet, Butch,” sweetly warned the Darby Kid, her arms about his neck, “you mustn't go to sleep at the switch. Harry'll nail you if youse do. It'll be a gun-fight, an' he's a dream wit' a gatt.”
“Never mind about that gatt thing! Do youse think, dearie, I'd let that Guinea cop a sneak on me?”
It was a cool evening in September. A dozen of Butch's young gons were knocking the balls about his pool tables. Butch himself was behind the bar. Outside in Willett Street a whistle sounded. Butch picked up a pistol off the drip-board, just in time to peg a shot at Harry the Soldier as that ill-used lover came through the front door. Dopey Benny, Jonathan to the other's David, was with Harry. Neither tried to shoot. Through a hail of lead from Butch's pistol, the two ran out the back door. No one killed; no one wounded. Butch had been shooting too high, as the bullet-raked ceiling made plain.