Chapter III: Part 3

Jake Sands was very pleased to see me returning in such good spirits. He helped me from the train at Blackhawk, a smile in the corners of his dark, handsome eyes.

“You look your bright self again. What have you decided—are you going to follow me and desert the Little Kingdom of Gilpin?”

“I think I am, Jake. But wait until I see what mail I have from home and what about Harvey. Then we’ll decide.”

Christmas letters and gifts had come from all my family, a lovely handsome mohair jacket from Mama, but no word from Harvey in Denver. During the holiday season, I wanted to feel charitable and kind so I put off making any plans. Jake and I celebrated together with his friends at the Shoo-Fly and we had enough jollity and parties to forget my unpleasant domestic situation. I knew that Jake’s interest in me was more than just sympathy but he did not broach any word or demand any favors. He was consideration, itself.

When the New Year had passed, I went to Idaho Springs to see the elder Does. Then I went to Denver to find Harvey and tell him I wanted a divorce. He was drinking and we quarrelled again. In response to my request, he said he thought in some ways our marriage had been a mistake. Perhaps if his mother and I hadn’t had such religious and other differences, we might have worked it out together. But as it was, couldn’t we try again? And he would make me a gift of our Troy Lode mine in which I still believed. Shortly after, he gave me the deed on the back of which he had written in a firm, legible hand:

“I, W. H. Doe, Jr., give up all my rights and title to my claims in the above said property to my wife, Mrs. W. H. Doe, formerly Lizzie B. McCourt of Oshkosh, Wis. (Signed) W. H. Doe, Jr. Jan. 29, 1880.”

I still wanted a divorce in my heart and, during the winter, inquired about the possibilities of getting one in Arapahoe County. My intention was to sue on the grounds of non-support. But Harvey kept nagging me and, on the night of March 2, wanted to make up. By then, I was so exasperated with his shilly-shallying and so impatient to be free so I could go to Leadville, that I said every cruel thing I could think of. We had a frightful quarrel and he shouted that to spite me, this time he really was going to a sporting house.

“You wouldn’t dare!” I snorted. “You aren’t that much of a man.”

He turned on his heel and rushed out of our tiny rooms. I hurried on to the street after him and, at the same time as following Harvey, looked for a policeman. As luck would have it, I found one, Edward Newman, just around the corner. We saw Harvey go into Lizzie Preston’s at 1943 Market and we followed him in. There, we got the evidence that I needed for a quick divorce. The decree was granted March 19 and I was ready for a fresh start.

Meanwhile, Jake had been living in Leadville. The night before his going, he had said to me:

“Baby, I have not been without ulterior motive these past months in trying to get you to move on. I hope you will come to Leadville and our friendship can go on the same as ever. That’s the place for a girl like you! We might even think of marriage.”

I was not in love with Jake, nor did I think I ever should be. But he had been the grandest friend a girl could hope for. I pressed his hand and said with an affectionate smile:

“Perhaps. We’ll see.”

By the time I reached Leadville, Jake was well established in his clothing business at 312 Harrison Avenue, which was the left-hand front store in the Tabor Opera House. They called this store Sands, Pelton & Co. Jake arranged for me to stay at a boarding house while he lived at 303 Harrison Avenue across the street from his business.

But I suppose once a gambler, always a gambler. Jake never indulged in excessive gambling but the spirit of it was in his blood. He loved to spend an evening, after a hard day’s work in the store, satisfying this taste. Instead of the lone Shoo-Fly, there were plenty of places he could go—by now—between forty and sixty alight every night, if you counted the side houses as well as the licensed places.

Pap Wyman’s was the most notorious. It stood at State and Harrison. I had been told that every man in camp went there to see the sights, if not to enter into all the activities which under one roof combined liquor-selling, gambling, dancing and woman’s oldest profession. The girls wore short skirts with bare arms and shoulders and besides being eager to dance, would encourage men to join them in the “green rooms,” a custom taken over from the variety theatres. These were small wine rooms where for every bottle of champagne that a man ordered, the girl’s card was punched for a dollar commission.

Frequently, late at night or early in the morning, a “madam” and her retinue of girls from one of the “parlor” houses would swoop into Wyman’s to join in the festivities. The dance hall girls were said to envy these “ladies” very much. Their expensive dresses and opulent jewelry, especially as displayed on the madam who was usually a jolly coarse peroxide blonde of forty or fifty, were far beyond their attainments. To be truthful, these sporting women were the aristocracy of the camp since nice married women whose husbands had not found bonanzas, spent the day in backbreaking work at washtubs or over hot stoves and were too tired in the evening to do anything but sleep.

One night Jake had gone over to Wyman’s to gamble and I was left to entertain myself. Feeling hungry toward the middle of the evening and being fond of oysters, I crossed Harrison Avenue to the old Saddle Rock Cafe which stood a block down from the Clarendon hotel and Tabor Opera house. When I entered and was shown to a table, the place was rather quiet.

“Intermission yet at the Opera House?” the waiter asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m not attending tonight. I’ve already seen this bill ... ‘The Marble Heart’.”

“Guess not,” he said. “We always get a lively bunch in here then.”

I was well aware of this fact. It was one of the reasons I had come. The motley cosmopolitan and rough-neck crowds of Leadville had never ceased to delight me. I could sit for hours in a hotel lobby or a restaurant and ask for no further entertainment than to watch the people.

Just as I finished ordering, the cafe started to fill up and coming in the entrance, I recognized Mr. Tabor with his theatre manager, Bill Bush.

The Silver King!

His tall back had been pointed out to me on the street and in the Clarendon hotel lobby by Jake but I had never before seen him face to face. Both men glanced directly at me where I sat alone at my table, and I saw Mr. Tabor turn toward Mr. Bush to say something. My heart skipped a beat and my oyster fork trembled in my hand.

“The great man of Colorado is talking about me!” ran the thought, vaulting and jubilant, through my mind.

Bush and Tabor were winding up a number of their Leadville affairs, I knew from the papers, because they had leased the Windsor Hotel on Larimer Street in Denver and were planning on opening it as soon as they had completed furnishing the building, probably in June. Tabor’s Leadville paper, The Herald, kept the camp well informed of their doings and as I was always an avid reader of every item that bore the Tabor name, I felt almost as if I already knew him.

He was over six feet tall with large regular features and a drooping moustache. Dark in coloring, at this time his hair had begun to recede a bit on his forehead and was turning grey at the temples. Always very well and conspicuously dressed, his personality seemed to fill any room he stepped into. His generosity and hospitality immediately attracted a crowd about him and he would start buying drinks and cracking jokes with everyone.

“That’s the kind of man I could love,” I thought to myself as I bent over my oysters. “A man who loves life and lives to the full!”

At that moment, the waiter tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a note. Scrawled on the back of a theatre program in a refined hand ran the message:

“Won’t you join us at our table?
William H. Bush.”

The blood rushed into my face and I felt hot and cold. Mr. Bush had been proprietor of the Teller House until a little over a year ago and I had met him with Father Doe when he had taken Harvey and me there for meals. Mr. Bush probably knew my whole humiliating story....

Glancing up, my eyes met Mr. Tabor’s piercing dark ones across the intervening tables and I knew in an instant that I was falling in love. Love at first sight. Love that was to last fifty-five years without a single unfaithful thought. Almost in a trance, I gathered up my braided gabardine coat and carriage boots to move over to their table.

“Governor Tabor, meet Mrs. Doe who’s come from Central to live in Leadville.”

I put my hand in Mr. Tabor’s large one and it seemed to me as if I never wanted to withdraw it. What was he thinking at that moment, I wondered? Was he feeling the electric magnetism in the touch of my hand as I was in his? Or was I just another one of the women that Augusta Tabor would carp about?

“Sit down, Mrs. Doe, and order anything you want on the menu. No point in going back to the show when we can sit here and entertain as pretty a young woman as you, is there Bill? Here’s a little lady we’ll have to get to know.”

_Chapter Three_

Leadville, the Saddle Rock Cafe, and the gay, boisterous mining and promoting crowd about me all swam dizzily away from my consciousness as I dropped down in a chair between the great silver king, Horace Tabor, and his manager, Bill Bush. I was in love! That was all I knew.

I was in love with a married man. I, a divorced woman, whose future with Jake was merely a nebulous suggestion. Yet here I was, beside the man I had dreamed of for so long—

“Surely, Bill, we should have champagne on this auspicious occasion?” Mr. Tabor went on.

The evening passed in one of those heavenly hazes in which afterward you want to remember every word, every glance, every happening, yet nothing remains but a roseate glow. We stayed there at the table, laughing and talking and drinking. Mostly we gossiped about people in Central City that Mr. Tabor and I knew of in common—Judge Belford, George Randolph and so on—or else about the operating conditions at the various mines there that I had heard talked about.

But there was one person whose name I never spoke—Jacob Sands. I wondered how much Bill Bush knew—or what he thought he knew. But nothing of this was hinted by either of us.

When the performance across Harrison Avenue at the Tabor Opera House was finished, Bill Bush excused himself, saying:

“I have some accounts to go over before I turn in—see you in the morning, Governor.”

Then the greatest man in Colorado leaned toward me and said:

“Now tell me about yourself.”

I gasped and began in little gurgles, but it was very easy talking to him. Little by little, I told him the whole story of my life as I have recounted it here—the high hopes of my marriage, my great reverence and love of the Colorado mountains, my excitement over the mining world, and finally, since his piercing eyes were not piercing when they looked at me, but soft and mellow and understanding, I told him, rather tearfully about Harvey and Jake, and why I was in Leadville.

“So you don’t want to marry Jake Sands—but think you ought to because of the money he’s spent helping you out?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I tell you what. I’ve got plenty of money, more’n I know what to do with. Let me give you enough to pay this fellow back and carry you along for a while, Something’s bound to turn up.”

This dazzling offer resounded in my ears like the explosion of dynamite.

“Why, Governor Tabor, I couldn’t let you do that!”

“Why not? Look on it as a grubstake. I’ve grubstaked hundreds of people in my day. Most of ’em came to nothing but some of ’em turned out lucky. I’m a great believer in the Tabor Luck—and this just might be another lucky grubstake for me. No telling.”

“But I never met you before this evening!”

“What’s that got to do with it? I never saw Hook or Rische before one morning they walked in the old Tabor store and asked me for a grubstake. And then they found the Little Pittsburgh. Meant millions for me!”

“But this grubstake can’t mean millions—I’ll never be able to repay it to you—”

“Not in money, perhaps. But I’m not looking for money anymore. I want other things out of life, too. You take this grubstake and forget it.”

He took a pencil from his pocket and wrote out a draft for five thousand dollars.

“You give this to Bill Bush in the morning and he’ll see that you’re all fixed up.”

As I stared at the sum on the slip of paper, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I gulped and glanced up, awe-struck.

“You’ll need some clothes and things, too,” he explained in a sort of an aside, and then turning to the waiter, called out “Another bottle of champagne, here!”

The merriest night of my life was on. Nobody in Leadville in those days went to bed until nearly dawn. I had been supposed to meet Jake at midnight in the lobby of the Clarendon for a late supper, but in the giddy exhilaration of the evening, I had forgotten all about it. It was way past midnight, now. There was nothing to do—Jake had been a marvelous friend, so marvelous that I never could think of him again without a little twinge of conscience—but I was in love! You can’t explain it—yet if you are in love, nothing else seems important. Everything else but your state of heart is out of focus. I would never have met Horace Tabor if it hadn’t been for Jake. Yet at that moment, I never wanted to see Jake Sands again.

And I seldom did. Although we often crossed on the streets of Leadville briefly, until he moved to Aspen in 1888, we were only casual friends. In Aspen, I was later told, he opened another store, married, and bought a house that still stands.

The next morning, after a conference with Bill Bush and Horace Tabor, they decided the best thing to do was to write him an explanatory letter.

“But, Governor Tabor,” I said, “Don’t you think I ought to see him? He’s been such a good friend—I think I ought to talk to him. It would be kinder.”

“No, I don’t think so. His feelings are bound to be hurt in any case. The quicker, the easier for him in the long run—you can tell him that in your letter. He’s a tenant of mine and a nice fellow. Later on, after you’ve written the letter, we will ask him to dinner some night.”

I pondered a long time over the writing of it, and stressed how deeply appreciative I was. I said I had decided not to marry him and I enclosed a thousand dollars which was more than enough to pay off my indebtedness. Even the enclosure of the money I tried to make especially kind.

“Now, Bill, you take this around personally and square Mrs. Doe off right with him,” Horace Tabor said. “We don’t want to have any hurt feelings around that last. We all want to be friends.”

He leaned over and patted my hand in reassurance of my act. But I needed no reassurance once the act was accomplished. My heart was dancing wildly!

History books will tell you the story of my love affair after that. Jake refused the money but did accept the gift of a diamond ring. Tabor moved me from the small room that I had into a suite at the Clarendon, and we became sweethearts.

For me, it was like suddenly walking into the door of heaven. This great man was the idol of whom I had dreamed and whom I had hoped Harvey Doe might copy. In those bleak months in Central City, I had avidly searched out reports of his accomplishments in the newspapers and memorized every word.

After the bonanza strike in the Little Pittsburgh, everything Tabor touched had turned to sparkling silver and untold riches. By the end of 1879, the total yield from the consolidated company was four million dollars and Tabor had sold his interest in this group of mines for a million dollars.

Late in the year before, in partnership with Marshall Field of Chicago, he bought the Chrysolite along with some auxiliary claims. Not long after, these mines had yielded three million dollars and Tabor eventually sold out his share for a million and a half. At the time, they told a story around Leadville about the Chrysolite that was written up in verse and printed on a broadside. They said that “Chicken Bill” Lovell, a clever swindler, had “high-graded” some ore from the Pittsburgh and “salted” the Chrysolite, then a barren hole, owned by Lovell. When Lovell showed his spurious mine to Tabor, the new silver king bought the holding for nine hundred dollars and shortly after put a crew to work. The miners discovered the deception and asked Tabor what to do.

“Keep on sinking,” was his command.

Ten feet more and they broke into a three million treasure chest of carbonate ore!

It was also in 1879 that he had bought the Matchless for over a hundred and seventeen thousand dollars and had purchased a half interest in the First National Bank in Denver. During the last year, he started expanding his investments far and wide—towards an iron mine on Breece Hill, gold mines in the San Juans, silver mines in Aspen, placer mines in Park county, smelters, irrigating canals, toll roads, railroads, copper land in Texas, grazing lands in Southern Colorado, a huge land concession in Honduras, and real estate in Leadville, Denver and Chicago.

_Baby Doe was a fat adolescent of sixteen years when this photo was
taken in Oshkosh in 1871. She is standing on the verandah, first
figure on the left, surrounded by all the members of her family except
Mark who was not born until the next year. Her mother and father are
standing beside Willard, held on the rocking horse. Her favorite
little sister, Claudia, is seated on the steps, and Philip and Peter
are standing at the right. Mr. George Cameron, her father’s partner,
is posed in the buggy. This fine house, 20 Division Street, burned in
1874._]

_The Oshkosh Times reported that the wedding of Lizzie McCourt and
Harvey Doe at St. Peter’s was so crowded that people were standing
outside. This photo was taken by A. E. Rinehart in Denver in 1880 at
1637 Larimer Street after their marriage had failed and Baby Doe
wanted a divorce._]

_After Harvey Doe messed up the management of his father’s Fourth of
July mine at Central City, the young couple took rooms in the brick
building above the white circled windows. The trains to Central City
chugged over the trestle almost at their bedside. The building,
unused, still stands; also Jacob Sands’ store, which is just off the
photo to the left._]

_Taken in the late 1890s, this photo came from his step-son, Sam
Kingsley of San Diego. Harvey married a widow with three children in
1893. At the time he was a cigar maker in Oshkosh. Later he became a
hotel detective in Milwaukee. He died in 1921 and lies there with Ida
Doe._]

_The Clarendon was built on Harrison Avenue in 1879 by William Bush.
Soon after, Tabor built the opera house to the left and the two were
connected by a catwalk from the top floor. Tabor had rooms and offices
upstairs in the opera house and could pass quickly and privately
across to Baby Doe’s suite. Jacob Sands’ store was the one with white
awnings downstairs in Tabor’s building. Could the caped figure be
Lizzie?_]

_This photo was taken in Leadville in 1880 and was Tabor’s favorite.
He had a frame made for it of the finest minted silver from the
Matchless mine and kept the photo on his dressing table. In the ’90s,
he borrowed money on his treasure to buy groceries, but died before it
was redeemed._]

_When Tabor was forty-seven years old, he struck it rich. He wanted to
have a good time, give parties, gain public office, and live in the
grand manner. Augusta, his austere New England wife, disapproved; but
when gay, smiling Baby Doe applauded a triangle was expertly drawn._]

_The most elegant hostelry of the Rocky Mountain region opened its
doors in June, 1880, furnished and run by Tabor and Bush. Very soon
its red plush lobby was the gathering place of all the elite and it
was not long afterward that Tabor decided to install Baby Doe in one
of its suites. She moved from Leadville and took up life close to her
lover. Except for the porte-cocheres, the Windsor looked the same
until 1958._]

_Central City’s Teller House is now the proud owner of these chairs
and jewel box that once belonged in Baby Doe’s suite at the Windsor.
Her diamond necklace contained stones that were said to be Isabella’s
and was imported from Spain, costing $75,000._]

_In September, 1881, Denver had grown to a city of over thirty-five
thousand population and it welcomed this handsome and lavish addition
to its business buildings with a deep gratitude and much publicity._]

_A ceremony took place the opening night, presenting this watch-fob to
Tabor. It represents an ore bucket of nuggets, leading by gold ladders
up to the Tabor Store at Oro, the Tabor Block, and last to the Tabor
Grand Theatre; the whole depicting the recipient’s climb to fame and
fortune. On the reverse side, were the date, monograms in enamel and
legends, “Presented by the citizens of Denver to H. A. W. Tabor” and
“Labor Omnia Vincet.” After Baby Doe was found dead, this gold
ornament appeared among her things, rolled up in rags. Although she
had sold most of her jewels to fulfill Tabor’s wish that she hang on
to the Matchless, she saved the talisman._]

_Cherry wood from Japan and mahogany from Honduras made the interior
of the Tabor subject matter for copious columns of newsprint. The
shimmering, expensive crystal chandelier has not yet been hung in this
photo; nor the chairs yet placed in the ornate boxes. On opening night
they were filled with the cream of Denver society, and reporters’
pencils were busy recording the bustles and bangles that made each
gown chic or very distinctive._]

_Box A was empty on the opening night because Augusta was not invited
by her husband. Tongues wagged freely about a Dresden figure, heavily
veiled, at the rear. After Baby Doe married Tabor, the box was always
decorated with white lilies when she was to be present. The box also
bore a large silver plaque, inscribed with the name TABOR._]

_When Baby Doe married Tabor, March, 1883, no expense was spared to
make the occasion memorable. A room of the Willard Hotel in
Washington, D. C., was decorated for supper. The centerpiece was six
feet high—a wedding bell of white roses, surmounted by a heart of red
roses and pierced by an arrow of violets, shot from a Cupid’s bow of
heliotrope. Other elaborate decorations garlanded the rest of the
room. The bride wore a $7,000 outfit of real lace lingerie, and a
brocaded satin gown, trimmed in marabou. President Arthur, senators
and congressmen attended the ceremony but their wives did not,
refusing to forgive the illicit affair and banning the Tabors from
society. The gown is now in the State Museum._]

_Her reddish gold hair, of which she had masses, was worn in a large
chignon at the nape of her neck until about a year before she married
Tabor. She frizzed the front hair for a fluffy effect; but later she
wore the back hair high and had the whole elaborately curled. Many men
succumbed to her charm and looks; among them, Carl Nollenberger,
popular Leadville saloon keeper, who had a beer tray made, portraying
her dainty profile. Her earlier photos have naturally arching
eyebrows; but later she pencilled these blacker and straighter. She
preferred color; the black is mourning for her father who died May,
1883. By then, she had also had her ears pierced._]

_The second house that Tabor bought was on the south side of 13th and
ran from Grant to Sherman. Shown are Tabor with his favorite horse and
Baby Doe beside a disputed statue. Three of the scandalous nude
figures can be seen, too, at the left by the spruce tree and in the
center of the pool. The interior shows a playing fountain, crystal
chandelier, heavy walnut furniture, oriental rugs and hangings, oil
paintings, mirrors, a loaded buffet, silver pitcher and every sort of
bric-a-brac, dear to those of the Victorian era._]

_No baby had such lavish belongings and such wide attention as Lillie
Tabor, who was born in July, 1884. Her christening outfit cost
$15,000. Her mother, who was fond of keeping scrapbooks, entered many
clippings about her beautiful baby. The right-hand page contains three
clippings from January, 1887, describing the visit of the artist,
Thomas Nast, to Denver and his sketching the baby for Harper’s Bazaar.
When Lillie was eighteen, she ran away to McCourt relatives in
Chicago. Later she married her cousin, John Last, and settled in
Milwaukee. Her daughters, Caroline and Jane, resided there for some
years after Lillie’s death in 1946, concealing their Tabor descent._]

_Baby Doe lost her second baby, a boy; and her third child, born in
1889, was another little girl. She only enjoyed four years of the
rich, petted life that her sister had had. Christened a long string of
names, she used Silver and Silver Dollar the most. Although Lillie
resembled Baby Doe in looks, Silver, who had the nickname of
“Honey-maid,” was closer to her mother. Silver spent most of her
adolescence and young womanhood in Leadville, living with her mother
at assorted cheap locations. She was fond of horses, gay parties,
dancing and excitement._

* * *

_Baby Doe’s favorite daughter tried to be a newspaper woman, a movie
actress, and a novelist with one printed book, “Star of Blood.” But
she failed in all her ventures. Silver Dollar’s end was tragic and
sordid in the extreme. She was scalded to death under very suspicious
circumstances in a rooming house in Chicago’s cheapest district. Not
yet thirty-six years old, she was a perpetual drunk, was addicted to
dope and had lived with many men under several aliases. Her funeral
expenses were paid by Peter McCourt._

* * *]

_Baby Doe’s happiest moment about Silver was this one, recorded on
August 29, 1910, when the ex-president Roosevelt was visiting in
Denver and received a song about his former visit with lyrics signed
by Silver Echo Tabor, age 20, a pretty brunette._]

_The Tabors lived opulently and showily right up to the moment of the
Silver Panic in 1893 when their fortune came tumbling down. In the
same year, 1895, that Augusta died a wealthy woman in California, they
were bankrupt. Tabor became a day laborer and Baby Doe did the hardest
sort of manual work. Finally Tabor was appointed postmaster of Denver.
The Tabors and their two little girls moved into two rooms at the
Windsor and here they lived until Tabor’s death in 1899. His dying
words to Baby Doe were, “Hang on to the Matchless. It will make
millions again.” But the people of Denver, attending performances in
the Tabor Theatre, looked at the curtain and quoted Kingsley’s sad
couplet:_

“So fleet the works of men, back to the earth again,
Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.”]

_For nearly thirty-six years after Tabor’s death, Baby Doe followed
her husband’s injunction. Between leases, and sometimes during leases,
she lived in a small tool cabin beside the shaft and the hoist house.
At the time of the author’s visit, in 1927, the mine looked as above.
This shot is taken looking west, in the direction of Leadville, and a
spur of Fryer Hill is blocking a view of the continental divide. Baby
Doe furnished the cabin (at the left) with plain furniture and
subsisted on cheap edibles. But the cabin was always extremely neat
and her coal and wood in tidy piles. Below is one of the last pictures
taken of her, October 6, 1933, and shows her characteristic clothing.
In winter, she wrapped her feet in burlap._]

_After Baby Doe’s body was found frozen, March 7, 1935, vandals
entered her cabin, ransacked her belongings, ripping up the mattress
and overturning everything, while they tried to find a fortune they
imagined she had hidden. But all the effects, that had been preserved
from her glorious days, were with the nuns or in Denver warehouses.
Baby Doe, herself, was neat and tidy._]

_Baby Doe’s friend bought a cottage at Hunter and Hopkins in 1889 and
later he rented this house on Main Street. Both his residences still
stand and are the delight of the tourists. In 1898, he and his wife
and their children moved to Leadville, then Arizona, and are now lost
to history._]

_When Baby Doe walked to town by the road that led into Leadville’s
Eighth Street, this was the view that faced her across the Arkansas
Valley. The mountains are miles away but seem close in the rarified
atmosphere. They are Elbert (Colorado’s highest) to the left and
Massive to the right. Below is the Matchless Mine after its partial
restoration in 1953._]

Now, in the shadow of the Continental Divide, this man, this Croesus, had become my lover. I just knew those gorgeous mountains would answer my prayer that first morning I saw them!

Meanwhile, Mrs. Tabor and Horace were entertaining society in their fine house in Denver and I only saw him on his visits to Leadville. But these visits were frequent, because that was the year of the fires in the Chrysolite mine and the strike that finally turned out all the miners of the district. Leadville was bedlam in June. Knots of men were loitering around everywhere, or preventing other miners from entering town, and the whole temper of the streets very ugly. Strikers and mine-owners both grew increasingly obstinate.

The strikers were most virulently angry against Tabor. Everyone went armed and the tenseness of the situation seemed about to destroy my new-found happiness. The miners said Tabor had been one of them just a short time ago, and it was their vote that had put him in political power. Now he had forgotten.

“Dirty B——, to turn on us,” I overheard many of the men in the street muttering.

Something had to be done. Tabor was one of the property owners to organize a Committee of Safety. They met with dramatic secrecy in Tabor’s private rooms in the Opera House, and after drawing up an agreement similar to that of the Vigilance Committee of early San Francisco, elected C. C. Davis, the editor of the _Chronicle_, their leader. Mr. Davis first sounded out Governor Pitkin on declaring martial law, but he said to call on him only as a last resort.

Feeling climbed to a higher pitch. Seven committees of local militia were organized and tempers were now reaching the boiling point. One day on Harrison Avenue for a distance of eight blocks, eight thousand striking miners menacingly swaggered back and forth and a like number of citizens of opposite sympathies paraded with determination as grim as theirs. The street was jammed. As I looked down, worried and fearful, from the window of my suite, it seemed as if at any moment, a local war would break out and the whole camp be destroyed by flames and bloodshed.

The leading men of the town took this moment to read a proclamation to the miners. Tabor, Davis and a number of others stepped out on the balcony of the Tabor Opera House. I hurried into the street to watch the proceedings, my heart beating wildly with fear. The seething mass of humanity below these men were all armed and they were mostly good shots. Tabor standing up so tall and dark and fierce on the balcony would make an excellent target.

“Oh, dear God,” I prayed. “Don’t let anything happen!”

I hardly realized I was praying at the time. But Davis demanded menacingly that the strike be called off. He told the miners to return to work, then said that if they would not accede, the citizens would protect the owners. He said they would bring in other workers to take their jobs. My fear was so great that I could actually hear my lips mumbling incoherent, beseeching words.

A shot rang out!

The sharp noise seemed to rend my heart in two. I hardly dared take my eyes from the balcony to glance around for fear of missing a falling figure among that intrepid group. But Tabor and his friends were straight and unconcerned. Their belief in law and order made them brave. The cut-throat mob must have sensed that. No figure fell from their midst. Whatever the shot was, it had not been fired at them. I sighed with relief.

Colonel Bohn of the Committee of Safety was trying to urge a horse he was mounted on through the mob, and was brandishing a drawn sword to emphasize his right. It was a very foolish thing to do at a time like that.

“Somebody must be trying to shoot the old fool,” the teamster next to me in the crowd remarked.

“Maybe a signal for the miners to start firing,” the man with him offered as a counter-suggestion.

I was terrified—not for myself—but because of Tabor’s exposed position. My hands flew to my throat.

“Oh, don’t say that!” I almost screamed.

The teamster turned around and stared at me.

“You’re all right—they won’t shoot you. It’s them damned slave-driving millionaires they’re after.”

And Tabor was the one they were after most! But nothing happened. A policeman pulled Colonel Bohn off his horse and rushed him to the jail “for disturbing the peace,” although it was more likely for safe-keeping. Finally, both sides of the fray began to split up in little groups, then to disperse and go home. The immediate danger was over. But I knew now what it was like to be in love with a prominent man in an important political office. It meant helpless fear of an assassin’s bullet. And fear was a new emotion to me—that’s where love had brought me. I shuddered and turned inward to the Clarendon.

Martial law was declared some hours later and slowly the miners went back to work, having lost their cause. There was covert grumbling in the saloons and on the streets for some time, but at last, life got back to normal, and the regular hum of the pumps at all the mines around filled the night again.

That July, ex-President Grant came to Leadville for a ten-day visit in and about the mining country. He came as Tabor’s guest and Tabor, as lieutenant-governor, headed a committee sent down to meet the general’s private car. It was coming on the D.&R.G. tracks from Manitou where the great man and his wife had been taking the waters. The committee accompanied the presidential party into camp over a road lighted the last miles with enormous bonfires. I was very thrilled at the idea of the President actually being in my hotel. After he had toured the mines and smelters and addressed discharged soldiers from the Civil War, a banquet was given him at the Clarendon on the last of his three days in the town proper.

The luxuriousness of the scene was impressive. The _Leadville Chronicle_ was printed on white satin to give to the President at the banquet as a souvenir of his visit. The gift made such a tremendous impression on him that when he died, he willed it to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington where it may still be seen.

Tabor, rather bewildered and shame-faced, came to me afterward in our suite and said:

“Darling, I know the President wanted to meet you more than anyone else in Leadville. I saw him look at you several times—you are always the most beautiful woman in any gathering. But you know this mining camp and how it talks. We must be discreet.”

“Yes, I understand perfectly,”—and I leaned over and kissed his forehead. He had thrown himself down rather disconsolately in a big overstuffed chair, and now he gathered me into his lap. We were locked in each other’s embrace for some minutes. We were happy just to be together.

When our relationship first began, I’m sure I was the most in love. But all through the summer, Tabor had begun to talk to me more and more seriously. Though he talked mostly about mining matters and about his political ambitions, he spoke finally about Augusta and me. It was an enormous experience, touching me to the soul, to watch the unfolding of the love and trust of the man I adored.

At first, I had been hardly more than a pretty toy of which he was very fond. He would lavish all sorts of costly presents on me—jewelry, clothes, and that rarest and most extravagant tribute in a mining camp at 10,000 feet altitude, flowers.

I remember one day he sent up a woman who used to peddle hand-made underwear across the mountains from camp to camp. She carried her samples and some of her wares in a large bag she packed on her back. Tabor sent her up to my suite one day. Then when she had everything in the way of exquisite lace and embroidered chemises laid out over the chairs and bed, he joined us and bought me over $350 worth of her goods!

But now things were different, I didn’t hear so many stories about his other women. I could feel his love for me growing with the appreciation he had for my character.

“You’re always so gay and laughing, Baby,” he would say, “and yet you’re so brave. Augusta is a damned brave woman, too, but she’s powerful disagreeable about it.”

He would sit glum and discouraged for a while, and then add:

“And I can’t imagine a woman who doesn’t like pretty things! I’ve tried to buy her all sorts of clothes and jewelry since we’ve had the money. But she just throws them back in my face and asks me if I’ve lost my mind.”

You can hear it said and you can read it in books that I broke up Governor Tabor’s home, and that he broke up mine. But that is far from the truth. Both of our marriages had failed before we ever met.

Augusta Tabor had no capacity for anything but strenuous work and very plain living. When they moved into their palatial new home, she wouldn’t live upstairs in the master’s bedroom but moved down in the servants’ quarters off the kitchen. She said they were plenty good enough for her—and how could she cook all that way away from the stove? She also insisted on keeping a cow tethered on the front lawn and milking it, herself. Tabor was very humiliated by these actions. As lieutenant-governor of the state, he was very anxious to live in a style befitting his station. Also, he hoped to be senator.

But Augusta Tabor laughed at his ideas in a very mean way. Tabor had a really sweet disposition. He would come to me often to tell me of some upsetting incident, with a dreadfully hurt look in his eye. Another trait of Tabor’s that irritated Augusta tremendously was his generosity. Anybody could touch Tabor for sizable loans with no trouble at all. He was delighted to help people less fortunate than he.

He had always been like that, and he was to the day he died. When he was Leadville’s first postmaster, he made up out of his own pocket the salaries of some five employees just so that Leadville could have more efficient service. He gave money to every church in Leadville for their building fund regardless of the denomination. He gave money for the Tabor Grand Hotel in Leadville (now the Vendome) in 1884, even after he moved away. He was the same lovable donor when he moved to Denver.

He sold the land at the corner of Sixteenth and Arapahoe Streets to the city of Denver for a postoffice, at a bargain price, and he followed this gesture up with a hundred and one donations to private and public charities.

“Trying to buy your way to popularity,” Augusta would sniff disparagingly.

Tabor would wince under her barbs. He gave because he liked people. He was naturally friendly, and the only times he gave money, hoping for some definite return, were in political channels. All his other gifts were spontaneous. But Augusta did not understand this generosity and she didn’t like it. And what Augusta did not like, she could make exceedingly clear with her sharp tongue! He never was her husband after July, 1880.

Naturally, in these trying circumstances, Tabor turned more and more to me. Later, that fall, he suggested that he should re-furnish one of the suites at the Windsor and that I should move to Denver to be closer to him. Nothing could have thrilled or delighted me more.

“Oh, darling! I would adore to live at the Windsor,” I cried, throwing my arms around him.

The Windsor was the last word in elegance, with a sixty-foot mahogany bar, a ballroom with elaborate crystal chandeliers, and floor of parquetry, and a lobby furnished in thick red carpet and diamond-dust-backed mirrors. It was much more impressive than the old American House, which had thrilled my girlish heart when I had first come to Colorado. Here was my dream slowly unfolding before me, almost exactly as I had first visualized it—to be a queen in the cosmopolitan circles of Denver!

Later we departed for Denver separately. I took the Rio Grande and wore a heavy veil. He took the stagecoach over to South Park and then went on the rival narrow gauge in David Moffat’s private car. But our reunion at the Windsor was all the more delightful because of our enforced separation. After Augusta’s comments on the Leadville strike, Tabor never spent an evening up on Broadway, but came to me more and more often.

“You’re a vulgar boor—I’ve always known that,” she had said, “but at least I thought you had enough sense not to call a common lynching gang a Committee of Safety for Law and Order. And getting mixed up with that silly egotistic rooster, Davis, who used a six-shooter for a gavel! And forcing Governor Pitkin to declare martial law. Mark you my words, you’ve lost all the political popularity you’ve been so busy buying by your recent actions.”

Tabor was very hurt at this, the more so because there seemed to be an element of truth in her words. The attitude toward him in Leadville had changed and Tabor really loved that mining camp—it was always “home” to him, much more than Denver. And in later years, I felt the same way, although just then I was eager to conquer fresh fields.

“Never mind,” I said. “I’m sure she’s wrong—and besides what do you care about that ugly old mining camp? You’re a big man going to do the biggest things for the nation. And what if Governor Pitkin doesn’t like you? Probably next election, you’ll be governor, yourself!”

Meanwhile, Tabor busied himself with plans for building another opera house, The Tabor Grand, in Denver. He called in his architects, W. J. Edbrooke and F. P. Burnham (who had designed the Tabor Block) and stuffed their pockets with $1,000 notes.

“Go to Europe and study the theatres of London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna. Pick up any good ideas they’ve got laying around and improve on them. I want only the best!”

Besides the architects, Tabor sent other agents on various missions. He detailed one man to go to Brussels for carpets, another to France for brocades and tapestries, a third to Japan for the best cherry wood to make the interior woodwork, a fourth to Honduras for mahogany for other trimming. A dozen contracts were drawn up in New York and Chicago for furnishings and fripperies. The building would be the most expensive west of the Mississippi.

About this time, Tabor went back to Leadville on a spree that Bill Bush was careful to tell me about. Bill had begun to feel jealous of my influence with Tabor although we were still outwardly very good friends. He wanted to make me jealous, in turn.

Tabor borrowed Dave Moffat’s private car and went to Leadville for a ball that the fast women and sports of the town were giving in the Wigwam. He told me and, undoubtedly, Augusta, that he had to go up to Leadville on some mining business and would probably be gone several days.

The ball turned out to be an orgy. Everyone drank too much and Tabor was supposed to have stumbled about with a girl in a gaudy spangled gown which, a few days before the ball, had been on display in the window of the Daniels, Fisher and Smith Dry Goods Emporium on Harrison Avenue, Leadville, bearing a tag marked $500. Bill Bush tried to insinuate that Tabor had bought it as a gift to another one of his loves.

“And why shouldn’t he, Bill?” I asked. “I love the man as he is. You forget I’m not Augusta. If he wants to have a good time among his friends, I think that’s fine. He knew all of them a long time before he knew me.”

But Bill wouldn’t believe I was sincere. He replied:

“Well, you’re a good actress!”

Then he added some more juicy details. After the ball, those who could still walk trooped over to the Odeon Variety Theatre where a new show started at 3 a.m. Tabor had sat in a box smoking cigars and drinking champagne. Every time he thought a girl was especially attractive, he would throw a shower of gold and silver coins over her head. At the intermission he had invited the actresses into his box and put his arms about their neat waists.

After the show ended at five o’clock, he went to the Saddle Rock Cafe, our favorite restaurant, for breakfast. Then he went back to the Clarendon, finally, to sleep. He slept all the next day. In the evening he asked three or four successful mining men to accompany him back to Denver in the private car. Having slept all day, he sat up all night as the train climbed over Kenosha Pass, playing poker, using twenty-dollar gold pieces as chips.

“And why shouldn’t he? I like a gambling man—someone who isn’t afraid to take chances—that was one of the worst faults of Harvey Doe.”

Bill Bush shrugged his shoulders. Presently he laughed off the whole conversation with:

“You’re a clever girl, Baby—shrewd as they come! But talking about your late and not too much lamented husband, where is he and what’s the state of your divorce? The Governor wants me to find out.”

“I don’t know where Harvey is but my divorce is final—I got it a year ago and I am a completely free agent.”

The year was now 1881. All that spring and summer, Tabor and I were immersed in the planning and erection of the great building that was to be a monument to the Tabor name for all time. Tabor had left home unequivocally in January, but as he was on so many frequent trips to New York, Chicago or Leadville, where he stayed was really not noticed until that autumn.

At the festive opening night of the Tabor Grand Opera House, with Emma Abbott singing Lucia, Box A of the six fashion boxes was conspicuously empty. That was the box Tabor had reserved for himself and family. It was wreathed in flowers and a huge pendant of roses hung above it. He was on the stage or in the wings waiting for the ceremony of dedication. Augusta, alone of all elaborately gowned Denver society, did not put in an appearance. I could hear whispers all around.

“Look, Mrs. Tabor isn’t here! Probably she’s found out about that blonde! Wonder if the little hussy’s had the nerve to come....”

I was there, but veiled and sitting in an inconspicuous seat in the parquet. I was right where I could see Tabor’s son, Maxcy, in Box H with Luella Babcock of whom his father had told me he was very fond, and the sight made me both happy and worried. I was happy to be there on an occasion so memorable to the great man I loved. But I was worried and unstrung about what would be the outcome of our love.

Augusta did know about me, because Bill Bush had been sent to her to try to negotiate a divorce a short time after Bill had looked up the record of my proceedings. But Augusta was obdurate. She considered divorce a lasting disgrace and stigma. She had refused pointblank. And so without a bid from Tabor that tremendous night of September 5, 1881, she stayed home.

The newspapers of Denver devoted pages to the opening and dedication. Even Eugene Field who ordinarily poked a great deal of unkind fun at Tabor in his capacity as an editor of the _Denver Tribune_, printed a complimentary quatrain:

“The opera house—a union grand
Of capital and labor,
Long will the stately structure stand
A monument to Tabor.”

The brick and limestone building, five stories high with a corner tower, was described as modified Egyptian Moresque architecture. It housed stores and offices besides the theatre proper, and all the necessary property and dressing rooms. The auditorium had an immense cut-glass chandelier and a beautiful drop-curtain painted by Robert Hopkin of Detroit. It showed the ruins of an ancient temple with broken pillars around a pool, and bore the following inscription by Charles Kingsley:

“So fleet the works of men, back to the earth again,
Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.”

Many writers since that day have pointed out the weird prophecy of Tabor’s fortune hidden in those lines. But no one thought anything of the curtain that night except that it was dignified and very decorative. Of course, I had seen the curtain before as I (shrouded in a veil when there were associates or too many workmen about) had spent much time with Tabor going over every detail.

Originally he had planned to have a portrait of Shakespeare hung in the lobby, but I said:

“No. Have your own portrait. _You_ are Denver’s benefactor.”

The next day he had the portrait altered. I also suggested the idea of a large silver plate with gold letters to be hung on Box A. When the jeweler delivered it, the block was two feet long and six inches thick, of solid silver from the Matchless Mine. The name Tabor was in relief letters of solid gold. I thought it was one of the handsomest things I ever saw. But I could spend pages on descriptions of the luxuries and elaborate furnishings of that building—as indeed many writers have already done before me.

But after that night, tongues wagged more venomously. Augusta continued mad and obstinate. It was a very trying situation for Tabor in a political way, as naturally all this defaming talk would have a bad effect on his reputation. Often he would come to me with his troubles. Finally, I suggested:

“Perhaps, if I moved over to the American House and gave you my suite, that would at least stop gossip around the Windsor. Nobody much hangs around the American House, the way they do this lobby.”

“Baby, you are wonderful. You are the cleverest little woman in the world! No one knows how much I want to make you my wife. And be able to show you off to the world as the proud man I really am! And not have to hide you behind that hideous veil—but what can I do with Augusta? She won’t talk to me and she won’t listen to Bill Bush. I haven’t given her any money for months now, just to try to force her to listen to reason.”