clean.

"Tell me about it," said Zeph. "Limpy Joe--who is he? Does he run the
place alone?"

"Yes," answered Ralph. "He is an orphan, and was hurt by the cars a
few years ago. The railroad settled with him for two hundred dollars,
an old freight car and a free pass for life over the road, including,
Limpy Joe stipulated, locomotives and cabooses."

"Wish I had that," said Zeph--"I'd be riding all the time."

"You would soon get tired of it," Ralph asserted. "Well, Joe invested
part of his money in a horse and wagon, located in that old freight
car, which the company moved here for him from a wreck in the creek,
and became a squatter on that little patch of ground. Then the
restaurant idea came along, and the railroad hands encouraged him.
Before that, however, Joe had driven all over the country, picking up
old lumber and the like, and the result is the place as you see it."

"Well, he must be an ambitious, industrious fellow."

"He is," affirmed Ralph, "and everybody likes him. He's ready at any
time of the night to get up and give a tired-out railroad hand a hot
cup of coffee or a lunch. His meals are famous, too, for he is a fine
cook."

"Hello, Ralph Fairbanks," piped a happy little voice as Ralph and Zeph
entered the restaurant.

Ralph shook hands with the speaker, a boy hobbling about the place on
a crutch.

"What's it going to be?" asked Limpy Joe, "full dinner or a lunch?"

"Both, best you've got," smiled Ralph. "The railroad is paying for
this."

"That so? Then we'll reduce the rates. Railroad has been too good to
me to overcharge the company."

"This is my friend, Zeph Dallas," introduced Ralph.

"Glad to know you," said Joe. "Sit down at the counter, fellows, and
I'll soon have you served."

"Well, well," said Zeph, staring around the place one way, then the
other, and then repeating the performance. "This strikes me."

"Interesting to you, is it?" asked Ralph.

"It's wonderful. Fixed this up all alone out of odds and ends? I tell
you, I'd like to be a partner in a business like this."

"Want a partner here, Joe?" called out Ralph to his friend in a
jocular way.

"I want a helper," answered the cripple, busy among the shining
cooking ware on a kitchen stove at one end of the restaurant.

"Mean that?" asked Zeph.

"I do. I have some new plans I want to carry out, and I need some one
to attend to the place half of the time."

Again Zeph glanced all about the place.

"Say, it fasci