Francis Lynde (1856-1930) was an American author who wrote The Master of Appleby (1902), The Grafters (1904), A Fool for Love (1905), The Quickening (1906), Empire Builders (1907), The Taming of Red Butte Western (1911), The Price (1911), The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush (1913), Branded (1918), The Golden Spider (1923) and Mr. Arnold (1923). The windows of the division head-quarters of the Pacific Southwestern at Copah look northward over bald, brown mesas, and across the Pannikin to the eroded cliffs of the Uintah Hills. The prospect, lacking vegetation, artistic atmosphere, and color, is crude and rather harshly aggressive; and to Lidgerwood, glooming thoughtfully out upon it through the weather-worn panes scratched and bedimmed by many desert sandstorms, it was peculiarly depressing.