Morrissey started to speak but Richard Pendleton interrupted. “No, thank you. No need to speak for me. I’ve a place to go and people who will be meeting me. Thank you.”
Morrissey walked away and the two boys looked at each other. Shanaghy was strongly built with black hair and blue eyes, a sprinkling of freckles over his nose. Pendleton was wiry and had light brown hair, somewhat the taller. “Thanks,” Shanaghy said. “You’re a fine fighter and you saved me a beating.” “It was Mr. Morrissey saved us both. Did you notice? They are afraid of him. He had only to speak, and they ran.”
“He’s a big man.”
“I think he’s more than that. I think he is John Morrissey, the prizefighter and gambling man.”
“Never heard of him.”
“My father told me of him, among others. He is … or was … the heavyweight champion at bare-knuckle fighting.”
The boys had then shaken hands and parted, Shanaghy to seek his job. It was a restaurant and saloon. There were a dozen men in the place and he asked for Clancy. “Yonder, by the door. But speak softly, he’s in a foul mood.” He crossed the room to Clancy and stopped before him. “I’m Tom Shanaghy. I’ve come for a job.”
“You’ve come for a job? Beat it, boy! I’ve no jobs and no time for ragamuffins in off the street.”
“Mr. Morrissey gave me this. It is for you.” Shanaghy handed him the note, and as he glanced at it the tall, thin man beside him looked over his shoulder. “You know Morrissey?”
“I do.”
“Clancy, don’t argue with the lad. That’s Old Smoke’s fist … No other could write like him. You’ve no choice.”
“All right,” Clancy said irritably. “Make yourself useful.” Abruptly, he walked away.
The tall man smiled. “It’s all right, boy. Clancy doesn’t like being told what to do, and least of all by Old Smoke. However, he’ll stand by it. You’ve a job, then.” As an afterthought, he added, “I’m his partner here … Henry Lochlin. You get into the kitchen and help with the dishes, clean up around. There’ll be plenty to do, and don’t worry about Clancy. He isn’t as mean as he sounds.” That was the way of it. He washed dishes, swept floors, peeled potatoes and ran errands.
A week later Henry Lochlin stopped beside him. “You’re a good lad and you’re doing well. You’ve worked before this, I take it?” “Aye … My father was a farrier, sir. We shod the horses of all the gentry, and I raced some of them.”
Lochlin looked at him again. “You’ve ridden races?” “Aye, on the dirt and on the turf, steeplechase as well. I rode first when I was nine, sir. That is, my first race was then. I’ve been up eleven times, sir.” “Good stock, those Irish horses.”
“The best, sir. The very best.”
“Did you win at all?”
“Three times, sir. We were in the money seven times, Mr. Lochlin.”
“You’re small for those big Irish horses.”
“But strong, sir. I helped my father with the work. I have shod horses myself, a time or two.”
Lochlin nodded. “One of these times, drop in on McCarthy. He’s got a blacksmith shop down the block. He might need help.”
McCarthy was a pleasant man, and a good smith. Shanaghy recognized that at once, and watched him with pleasure. His own father had been good or else they’d never have let him shoe all that racing stock, but this man was good, too. “If a man would live he must be the best,” McCarthy said, one day. “There’s many a smith in New York City, and there’s more than two hundred thousand horses in the town, bye. Two hundred thousand! Did you think of that? Each horse will drop twenty-five or -six pounds of manure per day, and there’s a stable in near every block on Manhattan! Think of that! The day will come when they will not tolerate a stable or a kept horse in the city! You’ll see!” “But how will they get about?”
“There’ll be a way. Steam cars … someway.”
“But what of you, then?”
“Ah, lad, there be three to four thousand on Manhattan who say they shoe horses, but there’s but a few to whom I’d trust a good horse.” He looked sharply at Shanaghy. “Your pa was a farrier? What happened to him?” “He went out to India with the soldiers. He was needed, they said. He turned up missing after an attack and is thought to be dead. Many were killed that time, and I am sure he was, too. With the hot weather and all, they don’t let bodies lie about waiting to be identified.”
“Aye, ‘tis the way of war. Many go and few return, and what happens to some of them you never know.” McCarthy glanced at him. “What is it you want for yourself? To be a waiter in a saloon? It isn’t much, lad. Better your father’s trade and to go west.”
“West? Where is that?”
“Ah, lad, there’s a wide land beyond us here! A far, beautiful land. They do be sayin’ there’s gold yonder, and silver, and all manner of things. Mostly there’s land free for the taking.”
“And the savages.”
“Aye. They be there, but there’s savages enough in the city, too.” He paused, hammer in hand. “It is a rough place where you be workin’, lad. There’s mostly women of no account, and among the men there’s thieves and worse. ‘Tis no fit place for a lad.”
“It is what I have, and Mr. Morrissey sees after me.” “Aye … when he’s of a mind to, and when he’s sober. I like old John, don’t you forget that, but he’s a rough ‘un, battered his way up with two hard fists and his wits and now he walks among the swells. Some of them sneer at him behind his back, but it is behind his back. They are all afraid of him, and when election comes he can get out the votes. Why,” he added grimly, “it is said that even the dead come to life and vote when he speaks, and well enough it can be true, for I’ve seen the names of those dead these three years, and still voting!” Tom Shanaghy chuckled, shaking his head. “He’s the canny one!” McCarthy spat. “Aye, but a man’ll get nowhere if he’s dishonest. Chickens come home to roost, me bye. Ride a straight trail and y’ll get farther and feel better, and have no worry about what someday will be discovered. “Those who are dishonest will be dishonest with you, too, and when it suits them will turn on y’. Among such folks y’ trust no man … and, particularly, no woman.”
Shanaghy shrugged. Who was McCarthy to talk? He ran a blacksmith shop he did not even own. Morrissey had a saloon, a restaurant, and who knew what else? People walked wide around him and spoke to him with respect. His mother, he reflected, had sounded just like McCarthy, but what did she know? She’d never been three miles from her own village until they went to the ship. A fine woman, a decent woman, but she did not know much about life. He was remembering all that as he made his camp. He took his blanket-roll back under the trees in the deepest shadow. He liked being close to the fire but was a little afraid of it, too. In New York they sometimes talked of the West and the Indians and he knew they were canny at hunting. He did not wish them to come upon him in the night.
He unrolled the blankets and it was then he found the shotgun. It was in two pieces, needing merely to be put together, and there was a tube container evidently made to contain the two pieces of the shotgun. Now it was filled with shells. He put the shotgun together and loaded it. Lying on his back, hands clasped behind his head, Tom Shanaghy listened to the rustle of the leaves and watched the fire dying. Tonight, for the first time in a long while, his thoughts kept returning to Ireland. It had been good there. Hungry, those years after his father went away, but good years in a green and lovely land. At first his father had sent them a little, then came the news that he was missing in action. Almost twelve years now he had stayed in New York, and that, too, had been hard … from the very first. Nearly every day he had a fight, and the boys he met were tough and streetwise, as schooled in fighting as he, but they lacked his natural quickness and the strength developed from the blacksmith’s hammer and the hard work on the farm. He whipped them all. All but Pegan Rice. The larger, older boy had whipped him four times. But while he was getting whipped, Tom Shanaghy was learning. Pegan had a bad habit of dropping his left after punching with it, so one time they fought Tom took the left going in and swung with his right. The punch went over the left to Pegan’s chin, and the timing was right. Pegan went down hard. He got up, Tom feinted, Pegan threw the left and Tom slipped it and crossed his right to the chin again. After that he saw no more of Pegan Rice.