F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams
Chapter 79
his gin, which they said was getting the whole of them. The McCartys
took a drop, and the girls took a drop, and the neighbors took a
drop, and they all kept taking drops, and the drops got the better
of them all. One of the Miss McCartys got to having words with
'Fighting Mary,' about an old affair in which poor English was
concerned, and the words got to blows, when Mr. Flanegan at the
Blazers stepped in to make peace. But the whole house got into a
fight, and the lights were put out, the corpse knocked over, and the
child (it was found dead in the morning) suffocated with the weight
of bodies felled in the melee. The noise and cries of murder brought
the police rushing in, and most of them were dragged off to the
Station; and the next day being Sunday, I wandered homeless and
friendless into Sheriff street. Poor English was taken in charge by
the officers. They kept him over Monday to see if any one would come
up and claim him. No one came for him; no one knew more of him than
that he went by the name of English; no one ever heard him say where
he came from-he never said a word about my mother, or whether he had
a relation in the world. He was carted off to Potter's Field and
buried. That was the last of poor English.
"We seldom got much to eat in the Points, and I had not tasted food
for twenty-four hours. I sat down on the steps of a German grocery,
and was soon ordered away by the keeper. Then I wandered into a
place they called Nightmare's Alley, where three old wooden
buildings with broken-down verandas stood, and were inhabited
principally by butchers. I sat down on the steps of one, and thought
if I only had a mother, or some one to care for me, and give me
something to eat, how happy I should be. And I cried. And a great
red-faced man came out of the house, and took me in, and gave me
something to eat. His name was Mike Mullholland, and he was good to
me, and I liked him, and took his name. And he lived with a
repulsive looking woman, in a little room he paid ten dollars a
month for. He had two big dogs, and worked at day work, in a