Outsiders
do not trespass with impunity. From Halsted to Robey, and
from Lake to Grand lay the broad hunting preserve of Kelly's
gang, to which Billy had been almost born, one might say.
Kelly owned the feed-store back of which the gang had loafed
for years, and though himself a respectable businessman his
name had been attached to the pack of hoodlums who held
forth at his back door as the easiest means of locating and
identifying its motley members.
The police and citizenry of this great territory were the
natural enemies and prey of Kelly's gang, but as the kings
of old protected the deer of their great forests from poachers,
so Kelly's gang felt it incumbent upon them to safeguard
the lives and property which they considered theirs by divine
right. It is doubtful that they thought of the matter in just
this way, but the effect was the same.
And so it was that as Billy Byrne wended homeward alone
in the wee hours of the morning after emptying the cash
drawer of old Schneider's saloon and locking the weeping
Schneider in his own ice box, he was deeply grieved and
angered to see three rank outsiders from Twelfth Street beating
Patrolman Stanley Lasky with his own baton, the while
they simultaneously strove to kick in his ribs with their
heavy boots.
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