brought something like the
truth; I have caused the widely scattered parts to cohere. After this I
could make little of his maunderings.

They were on the crowded boat and the boat steamed up the Hudson River;
and they disembarked at a thriving Western town--which, I gather, was
Yonkers--because Boogies feared his stepmother might trace him to this
boat, and because Jimmie Time became convinced that detectives were on
his track, wanting him for the embezzlement of a worn but still
practicable uniform of the Western Union Telegraph Company. So it was
agreed that they should take to the trackless forest, where there are
ways of throwing one's pursuers off the scent; where they would travel
by night, guided by the stars, and lay up by day, subsisting on spring
water and a little pemmican--source undisclosed. They were not going to
be taken alive--that was understood.

They hurried through the streets of this thriving Western town,
ultimately boarding an electric car--with a shrewd eye out for the
hellhounds of the law; and the car took them to the beginning of the
frontier, where they found the trackless forest. They reached the depths
of this forest after climbing a stone wall; and Jimmie Time said the
West looked good to him and that he could already smell the "b'ar steaks
br'iling."

Plain enough still, perhaps; but immediately it seemed that a princess
had for some time been sharing this great adventure. She was a beautiful
golden-haired princess, though quite small, and had flowers in her hair
and put some in the cap of Jimmie Time--behind the nickel badge--and
said she would make him her court dwarf or jester or knight, or
something; only the scout who was with her said this was rather silly
and that they had better be getting home or they knew very well what
would happen to them. But when they got lost Jimmie Time looked at this
scout's rifle and said it was a first-class rifle, and would knock an
Indian or a wild animal silly.

And the scout smoked a cigarette and got sick by it, and cried something
fierce; so they made a fire, and the princess didn't get sick when she
smoked hers, but told them a couple of bully stories, like reading in a
book, and ate every one of the greasy sugared crullers, because she was
a genuine princess, and Boogies thought at this time that maybe the
boundless West wasn't what it was cracked up to be; so, after they met
the madam, the madam said, well, if they was wanting to go out W