“According to which side your bread is buttered on,” was the reply. “Most of these roughnecks swear by him.” “But not the officials,” said Ralph. “Right-o. Now, last night, as we section men stood beside the tracks down there waiting for the Midnight Flyer to pass, I heard one fellow say: ‘Andy McCarrey says “Thumbs up!”’ And his mate said right back: ‘Ye-as. And suppose Andy says “Thumbs down!” How about it?’ “Now, you know, and I know, Ralph, the old game of ‘thumbs up and thumbs down.’ And then, in the times of the old Roman gladiators, the populace condemned the fallen gladiator to death or reprieved him by a turn of the thumb. Get me?” “I can’t say I do wholly,” admitted Ralph. “That Midnight Flyer whizzed by. Those two fellows looked at it and at old man Marks’s head sticking out of the cab window—if that’s who it was. They were speaking of that new fast train, the crack train of this division. Eh?” “It would seem so,” confessed Ralph, in a worried tone. “And it is in Andy McCarrey’s hands whether that train goes through safely or not,” whispered Zeph, his lips close to Ralph’s ear again. “That is my idea, my boy. And it is that idea that has brought me to Rockton to-day.” CHAPTER V ON THE HEELS OF A SHADOW Ralph reflected upon the hint Zeph had secured from two section men far down the division. The name of Andy McCarrey was one to conjure with among a large part of the maintenance of way men employed by the Great Northern. “Thumbs up” or “Thumbs down” might mean exactly what Zeph suggested. And the Midnight Flyer—so called, because it left Rockton terminal on the jot of midnight—was causing the divisional officials enough trouble and anxiety in any event. The new train should run on a schedule that called for the finest kind of human attention. The engineer in charge should be as good a man as there was on the division. The two firemen should be highly trained specialists in the handling of a locomotive’s fuel and water. There were but four stops for this flyer between Rockton and Hammerfest—a four-hour run at top speed. The locomotive pulling the train, and returning the next day with another fast express, was quite equal to the schedule. It was a new eight-driver, and had come out of the Baldwin works keyed up to seventy miles an hour on a level track. Of course, it was not expected that any engineer could hold the Midnight Flyer to that speed for the entire length of the run; but even the concessions made because of the heavy freight traffic over the division at night were not sufficient to make the run an easy one. Byron Marks, one of the grizzled engineers on the Great Northern list, was in line for the new locomotive and the new run. If the railroads had proper pension lists, the old man should have been weeding his garden and drawing pension money for the rest of his life.