Man cannot live by burglary alone, and Butch was not without his gregarious side. Seeking comradeship, he united himself with the Eastman gang. As a gangster he soon distinguished himself. He fought like a berserk; and it was a sort of war-frenzy, which overtook him in battle, that gave him his honorable prefix. Monk Eastman thought well of Butch. Not even Ike the Blood stood nearer than did Butch to the heart of that grim gang captain. Eastman's weakness was pigeons. When he himself went finally to Sing Sing, he asked the court to permit him another week in the Tombs, so that he might find a father for his five hundred feathered pets. In the days when Butch came to strengthen as well as ornament his forces, Eastman kept a bird store in Broome Street, under the New Irving Hall. Eastman also rented bicycles. Those who thirsted to stand well with him were sedulous to ride a wheel. They rented these uneasy engines of Eastman, with the view of drawing to themselves that leader's favor. Butch, himself, was early astride a bicycle. One time and another he paid into Eastman's hands the proceeds of many a _shush_ or _schlam_ job; and all for the calf-developing privilege of pedalling about the streets. Butch conceived an idea which peculiarly endeared him to Eastman. In Forsyth Street was a hall, and Butch--renting the same--organized an association which, in honorable advertisement of his chief's trade of pigeons and bicycles, he called the Squab-Wheelmen. Eastman himself stood godfather to this club, and at what times he reposed himself from his bike and pigeon labors, played pool in its rooms. There occurred that which might have shaken one less firmly established than Butch. As it was, it but solidified him and did him good. The world will remember the great gang battle, fought at Worth and Center Streets, between the Eastmans and the Five Points. The merry-making was put an end to by those spoil sports, the police, who, as much without noble sympathies as chivalric instincts, drove the contending warriors from the field at the point of their night sticks. Brief as was the fray, numerous were the brave deeds done. On one side or the other, the Dropper, the Nailer, Big Abrams, Ike the Blood, Slimmy, Johnny Rice, Jackeen Dalton, Biff Ellison and the Grabber distinguished themselves. As for Butch, he was deep within the warlike thick of things, and no one than he came more to the popular front.