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CHAPTER VII
LIMPY JOE’S RAILROAD RESTAURANT

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.

“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 fascinates me,” he observed to Ralph. “Upon my word, I believe I’ll come to work here when I get through with this work for you.”

“Tell you what,” said Limpy Joe with a shrewd glance at Zeph, as he placed the smoking dishes before his customers. “I’ll make it worth the while of an honest, active fellow to come in here with me. I have some grand ideas.”

“You had some good ones when you fitted up the place,” declared Zeph.

“You think it over. I like your looks,” continued Joe. “I’m in earnest, and I might make it a partnership after a while.”

The boys ate a hearty meal, and the young fireman paid for it.

“Business good, Joe?” he inquired, as they were about to leave.

“Famous. I’ve got some new customers, too. Don’t know who they are.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t, for a fact.”

“That sounds puzzling,” observed Ralph.

“Well, it’s considerable of a puzzle to me – all except the double pay I get,” responded Joe. “For nearly a week I’ve had a funny order. One dark night some one pushed up a window here and threw in a card. It contained instructions and a ten-dollar bill.”

“That’s pretty mysterious,” said the interested Zeph.

“The card told me that if I wanted to continue a good trade, I would say nothing about it, but every night at dark drive to a certain point in the timber yonder with a basket containing a good solid day’s feed for half-a-dozen men.”

“Well, well,” murmured Zeph, while Ralph gave quite a start, but remained silent, though strictly attentive.

“Well, I have acted on orders given, and haven’t said a word about it to anybody but you, Ralph. The reason I tell you is, because I think you are interested in some of the persons who are buying meals from me in this strange way. It’s all right for me to speak out before your friend here?”

“Oh, certainly,” assented Ralph.

“Well, Ike Slump is one of the party in the woods, and Mort Bemis is another.”

“I guessed that the moment you began your story,” said Ralph, “and I am looking for those very persons.”

“I thought you would be interested. They are wanted for that attempted treasure-train robbery, aren’t they?”

“Yes, and for a more recent occurrence,” answered Ralph – “the looting of the Dover freight the other night.”

“I never thought of that, though I should have done so,” said Joe. “The way I know that Slump and Bemis are in the woods yonder, is that one night I had a breakdown, and was delayed a little, and saw them come for the food basket where I had left it.”

Ralph’s mind was soon made up. He told Joe all about their plans.

“You’ve got to help us out, Joe,” he added.

“You mean take you up into the woods in the wagon to-night?”

“Yes.”

“Say,” said Joe, his shrewd eyes sparkling with excitement, “I’ll do it in fine style. Ask no questions. I’ve got a plan. I’ll have another breakdown, not a sham one, this time. I’ll have you two well covered up in the wagon box, and you can lie there until some one comes after the basket.”

“Good,” approved Ralph, “you are a genuine friend, Joe.”

Ralph and Zeph had to wait around the restaurant all the afternoon. There was only an occasional customer, and Joe had plenty of time to spare. He took a rare delight in showing his friends his treasures, as he called them.

About dusk Joe got the food supply ready for the party in the woods. He hitched up the horse to a wagon, arranged some blankets and hay in the bottom of the vehicle, so that his friends could hide themselves, and soon all was ready for the drive into the timber.

Ralph managed to look out as they proceeded into the woods. The wagon was driven about a mile. Then Joe got out and set the basket under a tree.

A little distance from it he got out again, took off a wheel, left it lying on the ground, unhitched the horse, and rode away on the back of the animal. The vehicle, to a casual observer, would suggest the appearance of a genuine breakdown.

“Now, Zeph,” said Ralph as both arranged their coverings so they could view tree and basket clearly, “no rash moves.”

“If anybody comes, what then?” inquired the farmer boy.

“We shall follow them, but with great caution. Keep close to me, so that I can give you special instructions, if it becomes necessary.”

“Good,” said Zeph. “That will be soon, for there they are!”

Two figures had appeared at the tree. One took up the basket, the other glanced around stealthily. Ralph recognized both of them, even in the dim twilight, at some distance away. One was Ike Slump, the other his old-time crony and accomplice, Mort Bemis.

CHAPTER VIII
THE HIDDEN PLUNDER

“That’s the fellow who brought the package of silk to old Ames,” whispered Zeph, staring hard from under covert at Slump.

“Yes, I recognize him,” responded Ralph in quite as guarded a tone. “Quiet, now, Zeph.”

Ike Slump and Mort Bemis continued to linger at the tree. They were looking at the wagon and beyond it.

“Say,” spoke the former to his companion, “what’s wrong?”

“How wrong?” inquired Mort.

“Why, some way our plans appear to have slipped a cog. There’s the wagon broken down and the boy has gone with the horse. Two of our men were to stop him, you know, and keep him here while we used the wagon.”

“Maybe they’re behind time. What’s the matter with our holding the boy till they come?”

“The very thing,” responded Ike, and, leaving the basket where it was, he and Mort ran after Limpy Joe and the horse.

“Get out of here, quick,” ordered Ralph to Zeph. “If we don’t, we shall probably be carried into the camp of the enemy.”

“Isn’t that just exactly the place that you want to reach?” inquired the farmer boy coolly.

“Not in this way. Out with you, and into the bushes. Don’t delay, Zeph, drop flat, some one else is coming.”

It was a wonder they were not discovered, for almost immediately two men came running towards the spot. They were doubtless the persons Ike Slump had referred to, for they gave a series of signal whistles, responded to by their youthful accomplices, who, a minute later, came into view leading the horse of which Limpy Joe was astride.

“We were late,” panted one of the men.

“Should think you were,” retorted Ike Slump. “This boy nearly got away. Say, if you wasn’t a cripple,” he continued to the young restaurant keeper, “I’d give you something for whacking me with that crutch of yours.”

“I’d whack you again, if it would do any good,” said the plucky fellow. “You’re a nice crowd, you are, bothering me this way after I’ve probably saved you from starvation the last week.”

“That’s all right, sonny,” drawled out one of the men. “We paid you for what you’ve done for us, and we will pay you still better for simply coming to our camp and staying there a prisoner, until we use that rig of yours for a few hours.”

“If you wanted to borrow the rig, why didn’t you do so in a decent fashion?” demanded Joe indignantly.

“You keep quiet, now,” advised the man who carried on the conversation. “We know our business. Here, Slump, you and Mort help get this wheel on the wagon and hitch up the horse.”

They forced Joe into the wagon bottom and proceeded to get ready for a drive into the woods.

“Bet Joe is wondering how we came to get out of that wagon,” observed Zeph to Ralph.

“Don’t talk,” said Ralph. “Now, when they start away, I will follow, you remain here.”

“Right here?”

“Yes, so that I may find you when I come back, and so that you can follow the wagon when it comes out of the woods again if I am not on hand.”

“You think they are going to move some of their plunder in the wagon?”

“Exactly,” replied the young fireman.

“Well, so do I. They won’t get far with it, though, if I am after them,” boasted Zeph. “Wish I had a detective star and some weapons.”

“The safest way to do is to follow them until they get near a town or settlement, and then go for assistance and arrest them,” advised Ralph. “Now, then, Zeph, make no false moves.”

“No, I will follow your orders strictly,” pledged the farmer boy.

The basket was lifted into the wagon by Ike, who, with Mort, led the horse through the intricate timber and brushwood. Progress was difficult and they proceeded slowly. As soon as it was safe to do so, Ralph left Zeph. The two men had taken up the trail of the wagon, guarding its rear so that Joe could not escape.

Ralph kept sight of them for half-an-hour and was led deeper and deeper into the woods. These lined the railroad cut, and he wondered that the gang of robbers had dared to camp so near to the recent scene of their thieving operations.

At last the young fireman was following only two men, for he could no longer see the wagon.

“Perhaps they have left Ike and Bemis to go ahead with the wagon and they are reaching the camp by a short cut,” reflected Ralph. “Why, no,” he suddenly exclaimed, as the men turned aside to take a new path. “These are not the same men at all who were with the wagon. I am off the trail, I am following some one else.”

Ralph made this discovery with some surprise. Certainly he had got mixed up in cautiously trailing the enemy at a distance. He wondered if the two men he was now following belonged to Ike Slump’s crowd.

“I must assume they do,” ruminated Ralph, “at least for the present. They are bound for some point in the woods, of course, and I shall soon know their destination.”

The two men proceeded for over a mile. They commenced an ascent where the cliffs lining the railroad cut began. The place was thick with underbrush and quite rocky in places, wild and desolate in the extreme, and the path they pursued so tortuous and winding that Ralph at length lost sight of them.

“Where have they disappeared to?” he asked himself, bending his ear, keeping a sharp lookout, and with difficulty penetrating the worst jungle of bushes and stunted trees he had yet encountered. “I hear voices.”

These guided Ralph, and he followed their indication. At last he came to a halt near an open space, where the men he was following had stopped.

“Here we are, Ames,” were the first distinct words that Ralph heard spoken.

“Why, one of these men must be the farmer that Zeph worked for,” decided Ralph.

“All right, you’re safe enough up here. Got the plunder here, have you?” was asked.

“Yes. I will show you the exact spot, and you come here after we have got the bulk of the stuff to a new hiding place, take it as you can, dispose of it, and keep us in ready money until we feel safe to ship our goods to some distant city and realize on them.”

“I’ll do just that,” was replied. “What are you leaving here for?”

“Adair, the road detective, is after us, we understand, and this is too dangerously near the railroad.”

“That’s so,” replied the person Ralph supposed to be Ames. “All right, I’ll not miss on my end of the case. Only, don’t send any more packages of the silk to friends. The one Slump sent might have got you into trouble.”

“I never knew he did it at the time,” was responded. “I raised a big row when I found out. You see, Evans, the man he sent it to, is in with us in a way, and is a particular friend of Ike Slump, but it was a big risk to send him goods that might be traced right back to us. Safe hiding place, eh?”

The speaker had proceeded to some bushes guarding the entrance to a cave-like depression in the dirt, gravel and rocks. He re-appeared with some packages for his companion. Then both went away from the spot.

“Why,” said Ralph, with considerable satisfaction, “this is the hiding place of the plunder. I am in possession, and what am I going to do about it?”

The discovery had come about so easily that the young fireman could scarcely plan out a next intelligent move all in a moment.

“Ames is an accomplice of the thieves,” he decided, “who are going to use Joe’s wagon to remove the bulk of this plunder. They will soon be here. What had I better do – what can I do?”

Ralph went in among the bushes as the men had done. He took a glance at a great heap of packages lying in a depression in the rocks. Then he advanced a few steps towards the edge of the cliff.

Ralph looked down fully two hundred feet into the railroad cut. This was almost the spot where the landslide had stopped the Dover night freight. The main tracks were clear now, but on a gravel pit siding were several cars.

“Why,” exclaimed Ralph suddenly, “if I only have the time to do it in, I have got the whole affair right in my own hands.”

A plan to deprive the railroad thieves of their booty had come into the mind of the young fireman. Ralph filled his arms with the packages of silk, advanced to the edge of the cliff, threw them over, and continued his operation until he had removed the last parcel from its hiding place.

“Something more to do yet,” he told himself, when this task was completed. “When the thieves discover that their plunder is gone, they may surmise that it disappeared this way. Can I make a safe descent?”

Ralph had a hard time getting down into the railroad cut. Once there, he hastily threw the silk packages into a half-filled gravel car, with a shovel covered them all over with sand and gravel, and then started on a run for Brocton.

CHAPTER IX
A SUSPICIOUS PROCEEDING

“Mr. Griscom, this is life!”

Ralph Fairbanks spoke with all the ardor of a lively, ambitious boy in love with the work in hand. He sat in the cab of the locomotive that drew the Limited Mail, and he almost felt as if he owned the splendid engine, the finest in the service of the Great Northern.

Two weeks had passed by since the young fireman had baffled the railroad thieves. Ralph had made brief work of his special duty for Adair, the road detective, and there had come to him a reward for doing his duty that was beyond his fondest expectations. This was a promotion that most beginners in his line would not have earned in any such brief space of time. The recovery of the stolen silk, however, had made Bob Adair a better friend than ever. The road detective had influence, and Ralph was promoted to the proud position of fireman of the Limited Mail.

This was his first trip in the passenger service, and naturally Ralph was anxious and excited. Griscom had been made engineer, his eyes having mended, and Ralph was very glad that the veteran railroader would continue as his partner.

Regarding the silk robbery, that was now ancient history, but for several days the occurrence had been one of interest all along the line. Adair had made public the circumstances of the case, and Ralph became quite a hero.

The night he had managed to get the plunder into the gravel car he had instantly secured assistance at Brocton. The valuable goods were guarded all night, and a party of men made a search for the thieves, but they had taken the alarm and had escaped.

Zeph Dallas had gone back to Millville with Limpy Joe, and went to work there. A further search was made for Ike Slump, Mort Bemis and their accomplices, but they could not be found. Jim Evans had been discharged from the railroad service. Nothing more was heard of Gasper Farrington, and it seemed to Ralph as if at last his enemies had been fully routed and there was nothing but a clear track ahead.

“It feels as if I was beginning life all over again,” Ralph had told his mother that morning. “Fireman of the Limited Mail – just think of it, mother! one of the best positions on the road.”

Ralph decided that the position demanded very honorable treatment, and he looked neat and quite dressed up, even in his working clothes, as he now sat in the engine cab.

Griscom proceeded to give him lots of suggestions and information regarding his new duties.

There had been a change in the old time schedule of the Limited Mail. Originally it had started from the city terminus in the early morning. Now the run was reversed, and the train left Stanley Junction at 10:15 A.M.

Ralph proceeded to get everything in order for the prospective run, but everything was so handy, it was a pleasure to contemplate his duties.

Just before train time a boy came running up to the engine. He was an old schoolmate and a neighbor.

“Ralph! Ralph!” he called breathlessly to the young fireman. “Your mother sent me with a letter that she got at the post-office.”

“For me? Thank you, Ned,” said Ralph.

He glanced at the address. The handwriting was unfamiliar. There was no time left to inspect the enclosure, so Ralph slipped the letter in his pocket and proceeded to attend to the fire.

He quite forgot the letter after that, finding the duties of a first-class fireman to be extremely arduous. There was plenty of coal to shovel, and he was pretty well tired out when they reached the city terminus.

“There, lad,” said Griscom proudly, as they steamed into the depot on time to a second. “This makes me feel like old times once more.”

There was a wait of four hours in the city, during which period the train hands were at liberty to spend their time as they chose. Griscom took Ralph to a neat little hotel, where they had a meal and the privileges of a reading room. It was there that Ralph suddenly remembered the letter sent to him that morning by his mother.

As he opened it he was somewhat puzzled, for the signature was strange to him. The missive stated that the writer “was acting for a former resident of Stanley Junction who wished to settle up certain obligations, if a satisfactory arrangement could be made.” Further the writer, as agent of the party in question, would meet Ralph at a certain hotel at a certain time and impart to him his instructions.

The young fireman was about to consult Griscom as to this mysterious missive, but found the old engineer engaged in conversation with some fellow railroaders, and, leaving the place, he proceeded to the hotel named in the letter.

He was an hour ahead of the time appointed in the communication and waited patiently for developments, thinking a good deal and wondering what would come of the affair.

Finally a man came into the place, acting as if he was looking for somebody. He was an under-sized person with a mean and crafty face. He glanced at Ralph, hesitated somewhat, and then advanced towards him.

“Is your name Fairbanks?” he questioned.

“Yes,” answered Ralph promptly.

“Wrote you a letter.”

“I received one, yes,” said Ralph. “May I ask its meaning?”

“Well, there is nothing gained by beating about the bush. I represent, as an attorney, Mr. Gasper Farrington.”

“I thought that when I read your letter,” said Ralph.

“Then we understand each other,” pursued the attorney. “Now then, see here, Farrington wants to do the square thing by you.”

“He ought to,” answered Ralph. “He owes us twenty thousand dollars and he has got to pay it.”

“Oh, yes, you can undoubtedly collect it in time,” admitted the man.

“But why all this mystery?” asked Ralph abruptly. “In an important matter like this, it appears to me some regular attorney might consult our attorneys at Stanley Junction.”

“Farrington won’t do that. He don’t feel the kindest in the world towards your people. Here is his simple proposition: This affair is to be settled up quietly between the parties directly interested. I am to give you certain papers for your mother to sign. You get them attended to. You will be later advised where and when to deliver them and get your money.”

“Twenty thousand dollars?” said Ralph.

“Yes.”

Ralph did not like the looks of things, but he kept his own counsel, and simply said:

“Very well, give me the documents you speak of and I will act upon them as my mother decides.”

“And keep the business strictly to yourselves.”

This looked reasonable to Ralph. He knew that Farrington felt deeply the disgrace already attached to his name for past misdeeds of which he had been guilty.

“We have no desire to humiliate Mr. Farrington any further,” he said. “We simply insist upon our rights. This strikes me as a mysterious and uncalled-for method of settling up a claim purely business-like in its character.”

“That is the way of old Farrington, you know,” suggested the man, with a coarse laugh.

“Yes, he seems to be given to dark ways,” said Ralph.

“Then it is all arranged?” questioned the “lawyer” eagerly.

“So far as it can be arranged for the time being.”

“Very well, you shall hear from us in a few days.”

Ralph left the hotel with one fixed conviction in his mind – that old Gasper Farrington was up to some new scheme and that it would be wise to look out for him.