I did all the cooking, washing, ironing and sewing. I worked early in
the morning and late at night to make Tabor presentable to appear
downtown with his business associates, and to have Lillie look nice when
she went to school. During those bleak years of the mid ’90s, our
affairs went consistently from bad to worse. My jewels, except a few
choice pieces, were pawned or sold for necessities. Some times we didn’t
have enough to eat. But I carried my head high, knowing that Tabor luck
was sure and that our fortunes were bound to change.
Tabor was past sixty-five and suddenly he was an old man. He worked as
an ordinary laborer in Leadville, wheeling slag at the smelter. But he
was not up to the strenuous physical effort. And the pay was only $3.00
a day. At the other end of town, the Matchless was shut down and her
shafts and drifts were fast filling with water after the stopping of the
pumps.
Desperation haunted our every move. I could not believe that what I had
laughingly spent for one of the children’s trinkets just a few years ago
would now keep the whole family in groceries for a month. During this
gloomy period, which lasted for five years, my greatest consolation was
Silver. She was four years old when the catastrophes first began to fall
and had no realization of what was happening. But her disposition was
always sweet and hopeful. She was a laughing, affectionate child, and
adored both her father and me.
“Darling, darling Silver,” I would murmur, tucking her into bed beside
her sister. “What would I ever do without you?”
When it seemed that none of us could survive the strain any longer and
that really all hope was lost, Senator Ed Wolcott whom I had met in
Central City and who had been both a former friend and a political enemy
of Tabor’s in Leadville and in Denver, came to the rescue. Through his
intercession, he succeeded in getting President McKinley to appoint
Tabor postmaster of Denver.
“Our luck is back!” I cried, clapping my hands in glee. “It was when you
were postmaster of Leadville that you struck it rich. I’m sure this is a
sign. Pretty soon, you’ll have it all back!”
We moved into a simple two-room suite, No. 302, in the Windsor Hotel. It
was on the corner above the alley, but with an uplifting view of the
mountains. Tabor went to work for the government. He was very grateful
and pleased with his position, although I thought much more should have
been done for him. Still, he enjoyed the work, and the regular routine
of his job. He settled down into being a quiet wage-earner and family
man. He practiced petty economies to live on $3,500 a year, a sum he had
lost many times on one hand of poker. Now his luncheon was a sandwich at
his desk. But he loved me and the children and he seemed to be really
content, despite the modesty of our circumstances.
“But you will be the great Tabor again,” I insisted from time to time. I
felt very deeply that his present simple occupation was too mean for the
great builder and benefactor that Tabor had been, a deplorable way to
end his days! It simply could not be.
He would pat my hand and say:
“My dear, brave little Baby. So trusting, so constant, so
hard-working—and always so cheerful! Your love has been the most
beautiful thing in my life.”
I cherished this tribute tenderly and have often thought of it in the
years since. The snobbish society women of Denver had been sure I would
leave Tabor the moment his fortune collapsed. I suppose if I had ever
really been what they thought me, I would have—but they had never given
me credit for the sincerity of my love. When the crash came, I was
thirty-eight years old. My beauty had hardly diminished at all. Several
men sought me out to make clandestine overtures when I was alone in the
cheap rooms in West Denver. But I sealed the knowledge of their visits
and who these men were—one of them had been, some years before, a
supposedly good friend of Tabor’s. My pride was incensed by their
offers.
“What sort of a wife do you think I am?” I demanded indignantly, and
sent them unceremoniously on their way.
But now the year was 1899. Tabor had held his job only a year and three
months in April, when he was taken violently ill with appendicitis. I
called in three doctors for advice. They mentioned an operation but were
doubtful of the outcome because of Tabor’s advanced age. Tabor had
always had a marvelous constitution and I felt sure he would pull
through without an operation. Besides, I was afraid of surgery.
For seven days and nights, I nursed him. I was by his bedside
constantly, never letting myself sleep except in cat-naps during this
long vigil. Often he was in too great pain to speak. Occasionally, the
suffering would let up, and we would talk a little.
“Never let the Matchless go, if I die, Baby,” he said once. “It will
make millions again when silver comes back.”
The week dragged endlessly by while worry and strain bore me down with
fatigue. Had I made the right decision? Would Tabor recover?
On the morning of April 10, the doctors who had come to examine Tabor,
led me gently aside and told me the end was near. Nervous and weak from
loss of sleep and doubt about the decision I had made regarding the
operation, I collapsed. It was not until the afternoon that I knew
anything, because drugs had been administered to me, and I had been
taken into another bedroom. When I came to, the nurse said:
“Your husband has gone.”
“Tabor, dead! Never!” I cried.
I tried all afternoon not to believe what they said, but finally I could
deny the truth no longer. Desperate grief weighed me down oppressively.
I was forty-four years old and my great love affair was over. Never
would I have any further life. What was I to do?
And almost as if the angels above had heard my harassed question, I
heard Tabor’s words ringing in my ears:
“Hang on to the Matchless. It will make millions again.”
_Chapter Five_
Fortunately for my state of mind, Tabor’s death was received with the
prestige due a great man. I think that if his passing had been snubbed
as he himself had been in his last years, I could not have borne my
sorrow. But his going was solemnized as it should have been.
“Deepest condolences to the widow of Senator Tabor,” arrived from the
governor of Colorado, the mayor of Denver, the legislature, the city
council and every civic and fraternal order in the state. Flowers filled
our hotel suite to overflowing. Telegrams arrived in bundles from all
over the country. It was a magnificent tribute.
“Oh, Silver! Oh, Lillie!” I cried between my tears and smiles, “Papa
would be so happy if he could but know!”
Flags were ordered at half mast on federal, state and city buildings.
The body was taken to the Capitol and viewed by thousands. At night the
doors were closed and four soldiers of the state militia stood guard
over the catafalque in the governor’s room. Floral pieces of many
designs were sent by the hundreds to the Capitol as well as to us. A
list of these donors filled more than a column in the newspapers.
Leadville sent a floral piece of roses six feet high and four feet wide,
designed like a cornucopia to symbolize the Tabor Plenty.
“He would be most pleased with that gift,” I explained to the girls.
“Papa really loved Leadville.”
At the funeral, services were first held in the Capitol. Then there was
a parade of federal and state soldiers, police and firemen. Four bands
marched in the procession. The cortege filed slowly along Broadway and
turned down Seventeenth St., finally making its way to Sacred Heart
Church at Twenty-eighth and Larimer Sts. Four priests officiated at the
church rites, Father Berry making the principal address.
Ten thousand people gathered along the line of march and as I peered out
from under my heavy black veil, I wanted to throw a kiss to each and
every one of them.
“Papa was a truly great man—they have come because they know that,” I
whispered to the girls who were riding in the same carriage with me. And
from somewhere, there began to run through my head the line: “In death a
hero, as in life a friend.”
I had been weeping off and on for days and this thought brought on a
fresh gust of racking sobs. It seemed as if I just could never regain
control of myself! I was spent with grief.
The parade re-formed after the church service and made its final march
to Calvary cemetery, a Catholic plot, beyond present Cheeseman Park.
Brief services followed at the grave side where we had gathered in a
knot about the coffin.
“Oh, Mama, Mama, Mama, don’t let them put Papa down there!” Silver
suddenly shrieked when she saw the body being lowered into the ground.
Silver and Lillie, both became hysterical and had to be led away to a
carriage by the members of my family who were with me. But the girls’
hysteria was contagious. In a burst of sobs, I rushed to the casket and
threw myself on its floral covering, possessed by some mad notion of
being buried with Tabor.
“There, there, Mrs. Tabor, you’re overwrought,” the priest soothed while
several people lifted me off. I was calmer as the men began to shovel in
the dirt and finally when the gathering began to disperse and move off
toward the carriages, I mustered enough voice to say:
“Please leave me alone here. Tell my coachman to wait at the gateway. I
will come a little later.”
Actually I sat and knelt there for hours. Evening came and the cold
April stars commenced to twinkle in the sky. I prayed and prayed, mostly
incoherent desires, but frequently that Tabor and I should be re-united
in heaven not too long away and I should have strength to carry on
alone. I prayed a little for Tabor, too, but not much. I knew that so
good and generous a man as he really was, despite some of his minor
transgressions, must surely find a safe, restful haven in the Lord’s
eyes. He would be happier than we.
My premonition was all too true. Happiness was his reward but not ours.
For about two years, we struggled on in Denver, trying to eke out a
living. Every hour I could take from housework, I spent in an endeavour
to secure capital for re-possessing and improving the Matchless and made
many calls on bankers and business men up and down 17th St. During the
twenty-five years since my arrival as the bride of Harvey Doe, Denver
had grown into the metropolis of the Rocky Mountains region. By 1901,
the town was known as the “Queen City of the Plains” and had a
population of 150,000, a phenomenal growth from the 30,000 of the
pioneer community I had first seen. In this more urban atmosphere,
investors were not drawn to mining the way they had been formerly—they
were turning to reclamation projects, sugar beet factories and tourist
attractions.
Lillie was a grown girl by now and Silver was just entering adolescence.
They were both lovely looking but Silver was much more the child of
Tabor’s and my great love. Lillie was silent and distant and each year
that she grew older, more contemptuous of my ideas.
“It’s all rot there being any millions in that hole in the ground,”
Lillie frequently remarked. “Why, that mine was completely worked out
years ago.”
Such disdain was treason to Silver and me. Our adored Tabor had said it
would bring us millions again as soon as silver came back and we
believed him implicitly. I kept on with my efforts, and persistence
finally told. Claudia McCourt, the one sister who had remained loyal to
me, bought back the Matchless at a sheriff’s sale in July, 1901. Oh,
what a wonderful lucky day that seemed! I knew that Tabor would be
proved right and I hurried home to tell the girls.
“We’ll move up to Leadville and be right there on the ground to see that
they don’t cheat us or steal any ore. Tabor always said to beware of
‘high-graders.’ You girls will love spending the summer in the
mountains.”
Silver was thrilled at the prospect and entered into my plans with
ardent enthusiasm. Lillie was very dubious about the whole project, both
opening the mine and living in Leadville. But when the day came for us
to move, she boarded the train with no further comment. We took rooms at
303 Harrison Avenue (the very building where Jake Sands had first
lived—but all that seemed to me now as if it had never been!) and
settled down to become residents of Leadville.
Silver soon made many friends and entered into the youngsters’ life in
Leadville with a vim. She had a natural sweetness and warmth like her
father’s that attracted people to her immediately. But Lillie spent most
of her time writing letters to her friends in Denver, shut up in a room
away from us.
“Come,” I said to them one day when we had driven out on Fryer Hill
close to the mine. “You must put on overalls and go down the shaft into
the Matchless the way I do so that when you inherit this bonanza, you’ll
know all about it.”
Silver was elated at the idea and rushed into the hoist house to look
for miner’s work clothes. But Lillie was rebellious.
“Then I’m going to run away!”
Later she secretly arranged for money from her uncle, Peter McCourt in
Denver, for train fare back to Chicago, Illinois, to live with the
McCourt relatives there. After Tabor had settled a substantial sum on
Mama and Papa, at the time of my marriage, I thought my older sisters
should have stayed loyal to me. But when Pete and I broke, they sided
with Pete, although Mama tried to gloss matters over. Soon after, Mama
died and the break was open.
For my own daughter to desert and go with those traitors to me—it was
unthinkable! I was crushed.
Yet so it was that Lillie passed from my life.
After that ugly, unfortunate day, I seldom mentioned her name to anyone
and she rarely communicated with me. It was almost as if I had never
borne her as my baby nor exhibited her with such pride. Those many
matinees when I had carried her in my arms through the foyer of the
Tabor or taken her riding beside me in our handsome carriage on the
streets of Denver so that all should see my darling first-born, had
vanished completely.
My beautiful fair-haired baby with her exquisite clothes was no more,
those days were like a dream that had passed. The first nine years of
her adoring mother’s lavish attention and the later ten years of
grueling, slaving work to keep her clothed and fed, had alike fallen
away and were as if they had never been. My last sight of her was as she
piled her belongings in the back of a hired buggy and drove off to the
railroad station.
“Oh, how cruel, how cruel life has been to me!” I moaned as the buggy
pulled away. Closing the door, I started on foot up town, hardly
conscious that I wanted to be able to pray alone in the Church of the
Annunciation on Seventh Street. Lillie’s buggy was disappearing and now
I needed the strength of prayer and the reassurance of the Virgin’s
beatific smile.
As I knelt alone in the white interior praying ardently, I gazed
heavenward at the imitation frescoes, replicas of classics pasted to the
wall. Slowly courage returned to me. I must still carry on—for Tabor’s
name and for Silver’s future. That thought came to me stronger and
stronger, bathed in the white light of a real revelation. Gradually the
almost trance-like state, that I must have been in for a long time,
subsided and I came back to the sharp realities of life.
“I wonder who all those saints are?” I mused to myself, again glancing
at the ceiling as I rose to go. I knew very little about spiritual
matters except for occasional readings in the Bible and I determined I
should know more. So before trudging the mile and a half home, I headed
for the library.
“This will be what you want, I think,” the very nice girl said in answer
to my query, and handed me “The Lives of the Saints.” From that day on,
it was my favorite book. I read and re-read it throughout the years,
supplementing its message with daily chapters from the Bible.
Meanwhile Silver was my pride and joy. When I got back to our house, I
told her about Lillie’s abrupt departure, trying to remain calm and
self-controlled as I narrated the episode.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish!” Silver answered impudently and threw her
arms around my neck. “Don’t let her hurt your feelings, Mama. She’ll he
sorry. When I’m a great authoress and you’re a rich society woman in
Denver, she’ll come running back. Then she’ll think differently about
the Tabor name.”
For some time Silver had had an ambition to write and was already
contributing extra poems to her English work in eighth grade. Now I
hugged her gratefully for her sympathy about Lillie and her
encouragement for the future. She had her father’s coloring and much of
his character. How proud he would have been of her if he could have seen
her at that moment!
“Yes, yes, I’m sure you’re right, Silver. Lillie will be sorry and come
back—and with your talent, you will make the Tabor name once again a
thing of lustre!”
Slow and silent, in some ways, and quickly and noisily in others, the
years slipped away. I had mortgaged the Matchless again, for development
work, with the expectation that when the shaft was sunk to a slightly
lower level, we would strike high-grade ore. But I was never able to
lease the mine to the right group of men to carry out my idea.
“Nobody knows anything about mining any more!” I would cry with
exasperation. “All the real miners like Tabor are dead.”
Through their ignorance and bad management, the mine ate up capital.
Although the leases paid occasionally in rent and royalties, those sums
were only large enough to keep Silver and me supplied with adequate
clothing and food. For a while, we rented a small house in town, once on
Seventh St. and at another period, on Tenth St. But the Matchless never
paid profits sufficient enough to dispel the mortgage. Once more,
foreclosure hung over our heads.
“Silver,” I said as we sat down to dinner. “We must go down to Denver
and open my safety box. Papa wouldn’t let me sell the very last of my
jewels—but now, we must. I’m sure he would understand. The Matchless
must be saved. Those were his last words.”
“Oh, Mama! Your beautiful jewelry!”
“Oh, well, I don’t have any use for it now. And when the Matchless pays
again, I can buy more.”
Silver and I frequently journeyed to Denver on pleasure trips or
jauntily to pass some of the long cold winters when the mine had to be
shut down. But this trip was a sad occasion. It was no easy matter to
part with those treasures, given to me by my dearly loved husband. But I
was determined they should go. I must keep a stiff upper lip. At the
bank, Silver cried:
“Oh, not your engagement ring—and not Papa’s watch-fob!”
My engagement ring was a single pure diamond, an enormous stone,
surrounded by sapphires and set in gold which Tabor had panned himself
in his early days at California Gulch. His watch-fob was a massive piece
of gold artwork presented to him by the citizens of Denver on the
opening night of the Tabor Grand Opera House. Three engraved pictures in
ornament, The Tabor Grand Opera House, the Tabor Block in Denver and the
Tabor Store in Oro in California Gulch, were suspended in links from a
triangle of gold held by a closed fist. On either side of the richly
carved medallions ran mine ladders of gold down to a lacy array of
miner’s tools below the medallions. These, in turn, held a bucket of
golden quartz, filled with gold and silver nuggets. On the reverse side,
were monograms in fine enamel and the legend “Presented by the citizens
of Denver to H. A. W. Tabor,” and “Labor Omnia Vincet.”
“That must be our talisman, Mama,” Silver suggested. “We must never part
with that.”
I felt in my bones Silver was right and I ordered those two pieces put
back into the safety deposit box. But the rest of the jewelry went to
pay debts just as the diamonds of Queen Isabella of Spain had
previously. My wedding present! What a sad memory! I never could bear to
go back to that vault—I was afraid I should burst into tears. But Silver
returned in 1911 and brought the two pieces to me at about the time we
decided to make our permanent home in Leadville, living at the Matchless
cabin to save rent.
“I met Mr. Edgar McMechen coming out and I showed him Papa’s fob,” she
told me. “He thought it was gorgeous and said to be careful of that—that
it was of great historical interest. I told him I wanted you to see it
again—that you needed cheering up—and just to see it, would help you
from getting discouraged and blue.”
“You are a sweet, thoughtful daughter,” I answered, kissing her. “I will
look at them for inspiration. Then I will give them to the sisters at
St. Vincent’s hospital in Leadville. They are always so kind to us and
will store anything I ask.”
But it was the year before that, in 1910, that Silver had given me my
greatest happiness about her. In 1908, President Roosevelt had visited
Leadville and Silver had ridden into town to see him. That evening when
she came back to the cabin, she wrote a lyric entitled “Our President
Roosevelt’s Colorado Hunt.” A. S. Lohmann of Denver later set it to
music and we had it published. The _Denver Post_ wrote up her
accomplishment and printed a picture of Silver two columns wide. I was
so pleased!
Two years later President Roosevelt, although no longer in office,
returned to Colorado and made an address in Denver. Silver was there,
close to the platform, and when the speech was ended, was presented to
him as the author of the Roosevelt song. The ex-president willingly
posed with my daughter and the next day, the Denver newspapers printed
photographs of Silver and President Roosevelt shaking hands.
“My darling, brilliant daughter!” I exclaimed in natural maternal pride
when I saw the account. “Again a Tabor associates with a president of
the United States—the Tabor luck is coming back!”
But I was wrong—that was the last day I was to experience great joy. My
dearest treasure, Silver, with her piquant profile and sweet demure
ways, was marked already with the shadow of tragedy. She had grown up
very fond of horses and riding. I could not afford anything for her to
ride but a burro that I used for hauling out ore from the mine. She used
to hang around the livery stable hoping for better things.
One of the partners was a big man who always wore an enormous white
ten-gallon hat and looked like a Western sheriff. He was a picturesque
figure in a common way. Generously, he fell into the habit of loaning
Silver riding horses, especially a spirited seventeen-hand cream gelding
which would carry her thundering up Harrison Avenue with a speed to
delight her romantic fancy. It was natural that she should be grateful
and linger after the ride, talking horseflesh in a friendly way.
Nothing untoward about this arrangement occurred to me since the man was
old enough to be a responsible citizen. He had known her from the time
she was a little girl trudging up and down Little Stray Horse Gulch with
a gunny sack over her shoulder, hauling mail and supplies. All the
old-timers made it a point to be kind to her—like Big Jim McDonald who
was running the Monarch mine up above us and frequently gave her a lift
in his buggy, or like Henry Butler, editor of the _Herald-Democrat_, who
loaned her a typewriter and helped her with her writing. I was not even
suspicious until it was too late.
When the village gossip reached my ears, I fell into a soft moaning but
then quickly denied the idea to my informant as impossible. But when I
was by myself, I moaned aloud.
For years, my fond hopes had built such castles-in-Spain for Silver—with
her dark prettiness and her unusual talent, no future could be too
roseate for her—and now I was beside myself with worry. The Matchless
had been mortgaged again, this time for $9,000 with an interest rate of
8%, and I was having more trouble with the lessees. There was no money
with which to send Silver away.
“What course should I take?” I asked myself in desperation.
Before I could come to any decision, matters gathered to a drastic head.
A few nights later, Silver set off for an Easter Monday hall in a lovely
silk dress I had made her and a fur-trimmed coat (since at 10,000 feet
altitude the spring nights are like icy winter). The party was to be
given for the nice young people of the town. She went with two boys who
were sons of substantial Leadville families.
But when Silver came in, it was eight-o-clock in the morning and she was
drunk. Her dress was disheveled and she had no coat. The lovely blue
silk dress was torn and dirty. And she was alone!