TOMORROW’S TANGLE [Illustration: “THAT’S MY LIFE,--TO WORK IN WILD PLACES WITH MEN”] TOMORROW’S TANGLE BY GERALDINE BONNER ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR I. KELLER [Illustration] INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT 1903 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY OCTOBER PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. TOMORROW’S TANGLE CONTENTS PROLOGUE CHAPTER PAGE I THE DESERT 1 II STRIKING A BARGAIN 7 III HE RIDES AWAY 28 IV THE ENCHANTED WINTER 50 MARIPOSA LILY I HIS SPLENDID DAUGHTER 71 II THE MILLIONAIRE 86 III RETROSPECT 100 IV A GALA NIGHT 119 V TRIAL FLIGHTS 130 VI THE VISION AND THE DREAM 147 VII THE REVELATION 157 VIII ITS EFFECT 172 IX HOW COULD HE 181 X THE PALE HORSE 194 XI BREAKS IN THE RAIN 214 XII DRIFT AND CROSSCUT 229 XIII THE SEED OF BANQUO 245 XIV VAIN PLEADINGS 260 XV THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 276 XVI REBELLIOUS HEARTS 294 XVII FRIEND AND BROTHER 311 XVIII WITH ME TO HELP 331 XIX NOT MADE IN HEAVEN 350 XX THE WOMAN TALKS 366 XXI THE MEETING IN THE RAIN 382 XXII A NIGHT’S WORK 398 XXIII THE LOST VOICE 410 XXIV A BROKEN TOOL 426 XXV HAVE YOU COME AT LAST 435 EPILOGUE I THE PRIMA DONNA 451 PROLOGUE TOMORROW’S TANGLE CHAPTER I THE DESERT “To every man a damsel or two.” --JUDGES. The vast, gray expanse of the desert lay still as a picture in the heat of the early afternoon. The silence of waste places held it. It was gaunt and sterile, clad with a drab growth of sage, flat as a table, and with the white scurf of the alkali breaking through its parched skin. It was the earth, lean, sapless, and marked with disease. A chain of purple hills looked down on its dead level, over which a wagon road passed like a scar across a haggard face. From the brazen arch of the sky heat poured down and was thrown back from the scorched surface of the land. It was August in the Utah Desert in the early fifties.