a married woman but now I began to think in terms of a career—I didn’t
know what. Jake Sands (as he now called himself in order to shorten his
name) wanted me to go into business with him when he opened his new
clothing store. But in this glamorous, adventurous world it seemed as if
that would be too tame a life for a girl whose exotic name had already
spread from one mining camp to another.
(I don’t mind saying that I was flattered at my new friend’s having
heard of me—and I am sure that if I hadn’t already fallen in love with
Leadville, this tribute alone would have persuaded me to change camps.)
When I returned to Central, my mind was made up. I had gone away with a
bruised soul, confused and hurt and undecided. My church did not
sanction divorce and it was a dreadful wrench to face what such a step
would mean.
But the romance of Colorado mining had caught me forever in its mesh—I
would never be happy again away from these mountains and away from the
gay, tantalizing feeling that tomorrow anything might happen. And did!
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.
[Illustration: LIZZIE M’COURT’S GIRLHOOD HOME IN OSHKOSH
_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._]
[Illustration: MRS. HARVEY DOE
_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._]
[Illustration: CLEAN-UP AFTER A FLASH FLOOD IN BLACKHAWK
_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._]
[Illustration: HARVEY DOE
_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._]
[Illustration: LIZZIE MOVED TO LEADVILLE’S CLARENDON HOTEL
_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?_]
[Illustration: NEW SWEETHEART
_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._]
[Illustration: AUGUSTA]
[Illustration: BABY DOE]
[Illustration: HORACE
THE TABOR TRIANGLE
_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._]
[Illustration: THE WINDSOR HOTEL IN DENVER
_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._]
[Illustration: GOLD CHAIRS
_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._]
[Illustration: THE TABOR GRAND THEATRE ON OPENING DAY
_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._]
[Illustration: DENVER’S GIFT TO TABOR
_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._]
[Illustration: GRANDEUR
_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._]
[Illustration: SCANDAL
_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._]
[Illustration: GLAMOROUS WEDDING
_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._]