“Don’t lose any sleep over that,” said the other. “Somebody’ll get hurt if they run up against me, and that’s no dream. I don’t have to ask no gang o’ Mocaraws if I kin go to a ball; ain’t that right?”
Murphy nodded the subject aside.
“Anything new?” he inquired, looking at the paper which his friend had thrown upon the bare floor.
“Nothin’ much, ’cept that Jack Slattery got the life lammed out o’ him in his twenty round job with McCook’s ‘Pidgeon.’ There’s a good t’ing gone wrong! I know the time when Slattery went right down the line and give ’em all a go; but drink got the best o’ him, and now he’s willin’ to take dimes for a hard job agin a big man, where he used to stan’ pat for dollars to put out a dub.”
“Rum’s a tough game to go up against,” commented Larry. “Say,” after a pause, “how’s yer trip South comin’ up?”
“Big. Me manager’s got me go’s at New Orleans, Galveston an’ half a dozen other burgs; an’ if I holds up me end, he’ll stack me against the champion fer as many plunks as youse kin hold in yer hat. That’ll be a great graft; eh, Larry? I’ll be a main squeeze meself then, and sportin’ guys’ll come out from under their hats as soon as they gits their eyes on me!” And Jimmie Larkin twisted himself around on his elbow and waved one thick, hairy arm delightedly.
“But, talkin’ about fight,” resumed he, “puts me in mind o’ the mix up at the club last night. Mart Kelly didn’t do a t’ing but open up Hogan wit’ a jack.”
Murphy sneered. “Kelly’s gittin’ to be a reg’lar slugger,” said he. “What was the matter?”
“Oh, he was a-shootin’ off his mouth like he always does. He said his old man was the best councilman the ward ever had; Hogan was about half drunk, and he said he was a stiff, and had trun down the party. Then they clinched and Kelly started to hammer him.”
All was now quiet in the street except for the rattle of an occasional wagon, and the faint wheeze of a broken accordion being played down the alley. A barb of yellow sunlight shot through the window and fell upon a bright lithograph of the Virgin which was tacked upon the wall near Larry’s bed. He had bought this years before and he had always kept it because he thought it looked like his dead mother. Across the room was a large photograph of Larkin in ring costume, as he had appeared just previous to his desperate battle with the champion of the sixth ward; and under this again was pasted a policy slip with three numbers underscored, commemorative of the day that same gentleman had struck the “Hard Luck Row,” at Levitsky’s policy shop, and gotten his name down upon the books of the tenth police district as a “drunk and disorderly.”