This is an excellent neighborhood to let alone, however curious you may be. The small section of city to which the nickname of “Cheyenne” has been given comprises the district bounded by Harrison Street on the north, Twelfth Street on the south, Dearborn Street on the east and Fifth Avenue on the west. In this district reside more dangerous characters than there are in any other portion of the city. It might almost be called a negro colony, so many colored people reside in it; but there are also large numbers of foreigners—the scum of the large cities of Europe—who are fruit-peddlers and organ-grinders by day and by night—heaven only knows what! They herd together like animals, twenty families sometimes finding lodging in one tenement. It is a historical fact that the police once literally “cleaned out” a house in which sixty-one Italians were living. The sixty-one comprised several families, as many as a score of persons sleeping in one room.
So desperate are many of “Cheyenne’s” known characters that no policeman who patrols a beat in that locality is permitted to do so alone. The officers move about in squads, armed to the teeth, for they never know when a gang of habitual criminals, out on a drunken frolic, may not swoop down upon them and evidence their traditional hatred for law and order by inaugurating an attack upon the officers with clubs, pistols and knives. When an arrest is contemplated in “Cheyenne,” a dozen armed officers go to the objective point in a patrol-wagon, prepared for any sort of an encounter; for it is a well-known fact that every prominent Cheyenneite has an army of followers who regard it as a point of honor to resist his arrest as bitterly as possible. The degree of importance enjoyed by the gentleman whose arrest is contemplated serves as a guide to the police authorities; if he is in any sense a leader, twenty stalwart men are none too few to be entrusted with the mission.
It is with no idea of speaking disparagingly of the fair sex that one remarks on the presence in “Cheyenne” of several dusky female characters of whom the police have a wholesome dread. Most officers would rather engage in a grapple with half a dozen male desperados than with one of those formidable negresses. They are Amazonian in physique and being thoroughly abandoned, are ready for any hideous devilment which may or may not turn up. “Big Mag,” the wickedest and most notorious character in Cheyenne was recently sentenced to five years at Joliet, and will therefore be safely caged during the Fair. She has raised riots without number in “Cheyenne” in her time. She is nearly six feet in height, as straight as an arrow and of such marvelous strength that no officer on the force would undertake to arrest her single-handed. She had a record with the pistol, too, and there was easier breathing at the Harrison Street Station when she went “over the road” for a comfortable five years.
As a general thing, there is not much noise or tumult in “Cheyenne” after nightfall. But its very quietude is its most deceptive feature. Woe to the guileless countryman who, having been celebrating his visit to the city not wisely but too well, ignorantly strolls into the dangerous canton. There are dark forms lurking in the alley-ways and doors, eager for prey. They carry razors as well as pistols, and will stop at nothing when booty looms in sight. But there are other times, generally on holidays when some electrical spark touches “Cheyenne,” and then the whole settlement goes, as it were, on a roaring tear. At such times the police are kept busy. There was one occasion—’twas last Thanksgiving Day, if one remembers aright, when the inhabitants of “Cheyenne,” male and female, turned out for a series of athletic contests. The open streets served as a race-course, and the dusky Amazons were the candidates for honors; the men preferring to stand and lay wagers on their prowess. A herculean negro lined the “mares” up for the start and sent them away to the crack of a pistol—no matter where the bullets went; such trifles are not considered in “Cheyenne,”—the Amazons picking up their skirts and tearing down the “track” to the cheers of their applauding friends who lined the sidewalks. Between races the saloons were patronized and the termination of the sport may be imagined. So long as the Cheyenneites confined themselves to mere racing, the police did not interfere, but when the bad whisky got in its work to such an extent that fights occurred at the conclusion of every race, an army of blue-coats swooped down and made wholesale arrests. The scene which followed will never be forgotten. It is a wonder that any policeman who figured in the raid escaped alive. The mob of desperate blacks surged round the officers trying to rescue the prisoners who had been gathered in at the first rush. Pistols were drawn and many shots fired. Nobody was killed, but many heads were cracked. The affair is talked of to this day in Cheyenne and no police officer who figured in it has any desire for a repetition of the experience.
It is just as well perhaps that so much of the dangerous element of the city should be grouped or colonized in this one spot; as the authorities know exactly where to look for it and can always be prepared to check any lawless demonstration that may emanate from it. If this locality is visited at all, it should be in broad daylight and in good company. “Cheyenne” might fitly be termed the Whitechapel of Chicago.
CHAPTER XXV.
CANDIES AND FLOWERS.
A community’s prosperity is always to be gauged by the amount of money it is able to spend on luxuries. And if candies and flowers are to be classed as luxuries Chicago must be very prosperous indeed, for the city supports a large number of large stores that are devoted to the sale of one or both of these articles.