The Four Stragglers — Frank L. Packard

Frank Lucius Packard (1877-1942) was a Canadian novelist born in Montreal, Quebec. He attended McGill University and the University of Liege and as a young man worked as a civil engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He went on to write many stories based on his experiences working on the railroad, before embarking on a series of mystery novels, the most famous of which featured a character named Jimmy Dale. A number of his novels were made into films. This work was first published in 1923.