Excerpt: “Northward from Truxton, Arizona, the desert stretches a red-hot, sandy arm, the elbow of which crooks about several arid ranges of baked hills clothed with a scanty growth of chaparral. Across this sun-bitten solitude of sand and sage brush extend two parallel steel lines—the branch of the Southern Pacific which at Truxton takes a bold plunge into the white solitudes of the dry country. Scattered few and far between on the monotonous level are desert towns, overtopped by lofty water tanks, perched on steel towers, in the place of trees, and sun-baked like everything else in the "great sandy." These isolated communities, the railroad serves. Twice a day, with the deliberate pace of the Gila Monster, a dusty train of three cars, drawn by a locomotive of obsolete pattern,—which has been not inaptly compared to a tailor's goose with a fire in it—makes its slow way."
John Henry Goldfrap (1879 – November 21, 1917) was an English-born journalist and author of boys' books, participating in the "American series phenomenon". He always wrote under pseudonyms. John Goldfrap was a member of the staff of the Evening World. He was born in England, and worked first at San Francisco newspapers, and then came to New York in 1905. In addition to his children's stories and newspaper work, Goldfrap wrote movie scripts.