Big Kennedy, when the club had found fortunate birth, “with these Red Jackets to make the decent front, th’ Tin Whistles to fall back on for the rough work, and Gaffney out of th’ way, I call th’ ward cleaned up. I’ll tell you this, my son: after th’ next election you shall have an office, or there’s no such man as Big John Kennedy.” He smote the table with his heavy hand until the glasses danced.
“But I won’t be of age,” I suggested.
“What’s the difference?” said Big Kennedy. “We’ll play that you are, d’ye see. There’ll be no one fool enough to talk about your age if I’m at your side. We’ll make it a place in the dock department; that’ll be about your size. S’ppose we say a perch where there’s twelve hundred dollars a year, an’ nothin’ to do but draw th’ scads an’ help your friends.”
Jimmy the Blacksmith was an under-captain of Big Kennedy’s and prevailed as vote-master in the northern end of the ward. Within certain fixed frontiers, which ran on one side within a block of my home, it was the business of Jimmy the Blacksmith to have watch and ward. He had charge of what meetings were held, and under the thumb of Big Kennedy carried forward the campaign, and on election day got out the vote.
Having given the question its share of thought, I determined for myself on a forward, upward step. My determination – heart and soul – became agate-hard to drive Jimmy the Blacksmith from his place, and set up my own rule over that slender kingdom.
Nor would I say aught to Big Kennedy of this private war which I meditated. Not that he would have interfered either to thwart or aid me, but by the ethics of the situation, to give him such notice was neither proper nor expected. To fight Jimmy the Blacksmith for his crown was not only right by every rule of ward justice, but it was the thing encouraged as a plan best likely to bring the strongest to the fore. Take what you may, keep what you can! was a Tammany statute; I would be right enough in that overthrow of Jimmy the Blacksmith, I was bent upon, if only I proved strong enough to bring it about. No, I was not to give word of my campaign to Big Kennedy, it was none of his affair, and he would prefer to be ignorant since he was bound to stand neutral. It is policy thus to let the younger cocks try beak and spur among themselves; it develops leadership, and is the one sure way of safety in picking out your captains.
There was one drawback; I didn’t live within the region of which I would make prize. However, ambition edged my wits and I bethought me of a plan whereby I might plow around that stump.
It was my own good fortune that I had no love, but only hate, for Jimmy the Blacksmith. I was yet so softened of a want of years, that had we been friends I would have withheld myself from attacking him. Youth is generous, wherefore youth is weak. It is not until age has stopped these leaks in one’s nature, and one ceases to give and only lives to take and keep, that one’s estate begins to take on fat. Have the word, therefore, of him whose scars speak for his experience: that one will be wise who regards generosity as a malady, a mere disease, and sets to cure it with every sullen, cruel drug the case demands. I say it was my good luck to hate Jimmy the Blacksmith. He had never condoned that election-day blow, and I must confess there was reason for this hardness. His jaw had been broken, and, though mended, it was still all of one side and made of him a most forbidding spectacle. And he nursed a thought of revenge in his breast; there came a light to his eye when we met that belongs with none save him whose merest wish is murder. I would have had more than black looks, but his heart was of a pale and treacherous family that can strike no blow in front, and thus far the pathway of chance had not opened for him to come upon me unaware. For all of which, not alone my ambition, but my safety and my pleasure urged me about the destruction of Jimmy the Blacksmith.
That epithet of the Blacksmith was born of no labors of the forge. Jimmy the Blacksmith was no more a blacksmith than a bishop. If he ever did a day’s work, then the fact was already so far astern upon the tides of time that no eye of memory might discern it. The title was won in a brawl wherein he slew a man. True to his nature, Jimmy slunk away from his adversary and would not face him. He returned, carrying a blacksmith’s fore-hammer. Creeping behind the other, Jimmy suddenly cried, with an oath:
“I’ll clink your anvil for you!”
With that word, the hammer descended and the victim fell, skull crushed like an eggshell. It required a deal of perjury to save the murderer from noose and trap. I should not say he was set backward by this bloodshed, since most men feared him for it and stepped out of his way, giving him what he asked for in the name of their own safety. It was for this work he was called the Blacksmith, and he carried the word as though it were a decoration.
Such was the man on whose downfall I stood resolved and whose place I meant to make my own. The thing was simple of performance too; all it asked were secrecy and a little wit. There was a Tammany club, one of regular sort and not like my Red Jacket Association, which was volunteer in its character. It met in that kingdom of the Blacksmith’s as a little parliament of politics. This club was privileged each year to name for Big Kennedy’s approval a man for that post of undercaptain. The annual selection was at hand. For four years the club had named Jimmy the Blacksmith; there came never the hint for believing he would not be pitched upon again.
Now be it known that scores of my Red Jackets were residents of the district over which Jimmy the Blacksmith held sway. Some there were who already belonged to his club. I gave those others word to join at once. Also I told them, as they regarded their standing as Red Jackets, to be present at that annual meeting.
The night arrived; the room was small and the attendance – except for my Red Jackets – being sparse, my people counted for three-quarters of those present. With the earliest move I took possession of the meeting, and selected its chairman. Then, by resolution, I added the block in which I resided to the public domain of the club. That question of residence replied to, instead of Jimmy the Blacksmith, I was named ballot-captain for the year. It was no more complex as a transaction than counting ten. The fact was accomplished like scratching a match; I had set the foot of my climbing on Jimmy the Blacksmith’s neck.
That unworthy was present; and to say he was made mad with the fury of it would be to write with snow the color of his feelings.
“It’s a steal!” he cried, springing to his feet. The little bandbox of a hall rang with his roarings. Then, to me: “I’ll fight you for it! You don’t dare meet me in the Peach Orchard to-morrow at three!”
“Bring your sledge, Jimmy,” shouted some humorist; “you’ll need it.”
The Peach Orchard might have been a peach orchard in the days of Peter Stuyvesant. All formal battles took place in the Peach Orchard. Wherefore, and because the challenge for its propriety was not without precedent, to the Peach Orchard at the hour named I repaired.
Jimmy the Blacksmith, however, came not. Someone brought the word that he was sick; whereat those present, being fifty gentlemen with a curiosity to look on carnage, and ones whose own robust health led them to regard the term “sickness” as a synonym for the preposterous, jeered the name of Jimmy the Blacksmith from their hearts.
“Jimmy the Cur! it ought to be,” growled one, whose disappointment over a fight deferred was sore in the extreme.
Perhaps you will argue that it smacked of the underhand to thus steal upon Jimmy the Blacksmith and take his place from him without due warning given. I confess it would have been more like chivalry if I had sent him, so to say, a glove and told my intentions against him. Also it would have augmented labor and multiplied risk. The great thing is to win and win cheaply; a victory that costs more than it comes to is nothing but a mask for defeat.
“You’re down and out,” said Big Kennedy, when Jimmy the Blacksmith brought his injuries to that chieftain. “Your reputation is gone too; you were a fool to say ‘Peach Orchard’ when you lacked the nerve to make it good. You’ll never hold up your head ag’in in th’ ward, an’ if I was you I’d line out after Gaffney. This is a bad ward for a mongrel, Jimmy, an’ I’d skin out.”
Jimmy the Blacksmith followed Gaffney and disappeared from the country of Big Kennedy. He was to occur again in my career, however, as he who reads on shall see, and under conditions which struck the color from my cheek and set my heart to a trot with the terrors they loosed