West Of Whitechapel: Jack the Ripper in the Wild West by Wayne D. Dundee

Author:Wayne D. Dundee [Dundee, Wayne D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781647347277
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing
Published: 2021-06-08T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

It wasn't hard to find Birnbaum's store. It was a block and a half straight down from the blacksmith and livery, a broad two-story building with a big sign out front.

Victoria and I followed sections of boardwalk most of the way. As far as I could see, there was little or no activity taking place in any of the other shops and businesses we passed by. Reaching the store, we turned down a side alley that led to the back of the building. By then we were hearing the raucous, low rumble of an excited crowd coming from the other end of the alley.

The lot behind Birnbaum's was a wide expanse of trampled grass probably used most of the time for parking and unloading freight wagons. Today, under the cloudy, still gloomy sky, it had been turned into a loud, busy showplace. An irregular circle of plywood sheets, each about three feet high when stood on edge and bracketed together with short lengths of two-by-fours, had been erected. It was roughly a dozen feet in diameter.

On the store side of this arena, or “fighting pit” to use the terminology of what was underway, a crowd numbering easily a hundred was bunched in close and eager. On the other side, a horse-drawn flatbed wagon was parked. A row of three sturdy cages with close-set iron bars sat on the wagon bed. One was empty, the other two each held a restlessly prowling, snarling dog—large, heavy-chested, bristly-haired canines that indeed had the look of possessing a bit of wolf in their bloodline. A third, similar-looking beast, obviously having once been contained in the empty cage, was inside the pit.

Looking on, leaning casually back against the wagon, was a massive, vapid-faced man wearing baggy bib overalls and a grungy, once-white shirt with the sleeves torn off at the shoulder. The hair on his head was cropped to a spikey black stubble that ran down to a whiskery growth of more of the same covering his heavy jowls. Judging by Janice Drummond's description, this had to be Irwin Burdett.

That made a second man, who was moving around within the walls of the pit, his brother Ivan. The brains of the outfit. He was above average height, trim and muscular, clad in striped trousers tucked into high boots and a faded denim shirt also with the sleeves chopped off. His hair was long, tangled, and greasy, and a droopy black mustache hung from under his nose. His purpose for being inside the pit seemed to be whipping up the aggression of the uncaged dog. He was doing this by striding back and forth, shouting commands and slapping the riding crop he carried in one hand against the side of his boot so that it made a sharp cracking sound. In his other hand he held a thick, two-foot oak cudgel that I recognized as what dog fighters call a “breaker stick”, used for separating a pair of dogs locked in combat when the handler of one calls yield and wants to try and save his defeated fighter from further damage.

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