Zeph Dallas stared about him in profound bewilderment and interest as Ralph led the way towards Limpy Joe’s Railroad Restaurant.
It was certainly an odd-appearing place. Additions had been built onto the freight car until the same were longer than the original structure.
A square of about two hundred feet was enclosed by a barbed wire fence, and this space was quite as interesting as the restaurant building.
There was a rude shack, which seemed to answer for a barn, a haystack beside it, and a well-appearing vegetable garden. Then, in one corner of the yard, was a heap of old lumber, stone, brick, doors, window sash, in fact, it looked as if some one had been gathering all the unmated parts of various houses he could find.
The restaurant was neatly painted a regular, dark-red freight-car color outside. Into it many windows had been cut, and a glance through the open doorway showed an interior scrupulously neat and clean. 51
“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.”