Tabora

“ Wahle employed British, Indian and African prisoners in building a road towards Mahenge and established food depots along it. On Sept. 18 Wahle evacuated Tabora, leaving behind about 150 white (German) soldiers, some sick, some simply war-weary, a number of civilians (among them Frau Schnee) , many prisoners of war and considerable military stores. The Belgians occupied the town the next day. Sir Charles Crewe’s column, which, it was hoped, would have reached the railway line E. of Tabora before the Germans had time to get away, only struck the line a week later. ”

“ A tribe refused to let them pass with a corpse. Then they made up a load resembling that containing the body, and gave out that they had decided to return to Tabora to bury their master there. Some of the men marched back with the false package, which they took to pieces at night and scattered among the bush. Then they returned to their comrades, who meanwhile had altered the real package so as to look like a bale of cloth. The natives were then satisfied and let them move on unmolested. ”

“ The operations of the Belgians had been carefully planned and were thoroughly successful. While such troops as were available were engaged in defending, as best they could, the Congo frontiers, a special force of a little over 10,000 The Belgian Advance to Tabora. men—all natives of the Congo—was raised and officered by Europeans. All supplies for this force, except food, had to be imported, a long and tedious process. A railway completed in Sept. ”

“ A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action.
We reached Tabor safely, and considerably in advance of that old iron-clad swindle of a guard. We never saw a human being on the whole route, much less lawless hordes of Bedouins. Tabor stands solitary and alone, a giant sentinel above the Plain of Esdraelon. It rises some fourteen hundred feet above the surrounding level, a green, wooden cone, symmetrical and full of grace—a prominent landmark, and one that is exceedingly pleasant to eyes surfeited with the repulsive monotony of desert Syria. ”

“ When he heard of Tabor’s plight, he wrote him a check for $15,000 to use in developing his Eclipse mine in Boulder County.
“There’s a true friend,” Tabor remarked with touching humility. It wrung me to the quick to see him act like this, pathetic and almost beaten. When he had had money, and even in the days before I knew him and before he became rich, his generosity and honesty had been proverbial. In return, the world gave him only deceit and niggardliness—and a cold shoulder. Many a night I wept with secret rage at the world as much as sorrow for Tabor. ”

“ Although she epitomized a roistering era and a swashbuckling way of life made possible by the mining frontier of Colorado, the granite gloom of those powerful mountains has forever lowered the curtain on her dramatic period and on the valiant, if mistaken, spirit of Baby Doe Tabor. In relegating both, and their final evaluation, to the pages of history, the lines inscribed on the stage drop of the Tabor Opera House recur, ever again, emphasizing their fatal prophecy:
So fleet the works of men, back to the earth again,
Ancient and holy things fade like a dream. ”

“ That was January 27, 1883, and by February 3, he was being sworn in at Washington. I have never seen anyone so delighted and happy as Tabor was, leaving Denver. He was fifty-two years old but you would have thought he was twelve and had been given his first pony. I, too, was joyful and expectant.
“And what a wedding we’ll have, Baby!” he said in parting. “I’ll fix all the details and send for you to be married just before my term is up. If all goes well, you’ll have both a priest and a president at your ceremony! A lover couldn’t do more. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Through Tabor’s prominence in Denver and Leadville, I met and entertained many men interested in politics. The famous beauties, Lily Langtry and Lillian Russell, and other well-known figures of the nineteenth century stage such as Sara Bernhardt, Mme. Modjeska, John Drew, Augustin Daly, William Gillette, Edwin Booth, and Otis Skinner frequently played at the Tabor Opera House, and Tabor and I would entertain them at champagne suppers after their performances. They always seemed to like me and would ask to see me on our fairly frequent visits to New York. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am only a woman, and perhaps I give myself credit for more courage than I really have; but one thing I know, I have a strong will, and I have made up my mind. I mean to go and find the King and my father!"
"What!" exclaimed Talabor, almost petrified by the mere idea of so daring a step. "Master Peter—we don't even know whether——"
"He is alive!" interrupted Dora very decidedly.
"But the King! whether it is true or not, who can say? But so far as I can gather he seems to be in Dalmatia, and the Tartars are pursuing him. The country may still be full of them, for anything I know ”

“ 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. ”

“ My great husband, Tabor, could not have spoken other than truthfully and prophetically from his deathbed and if I was to live true to his command, I must always believe.
“I have no reason for living if I do not have faith in the Matchless. No dear one is left to me. I have only this one legacy of my great love. It is my mission and my life,” were the thoughts that ran through my head as I left the banker’s office. But now I had exhausted my last resource. No future was ahead of me, no work to do and no place to live. The mine was doomed—and my heart sank to the lowest depths. ”

“ I could not make him share my belief that Tabor would recoup everything. In my innermost heart, I knew he would. But here was a new kind of man in Colorado who did not look at life the way the first-comers did. Those men were plungers, gay and generous. When they had money, they spent it and when they didn’t, they had the bravery to start out on new ventures and make other fortunes. When a friend was down, they loaned him more than he needed and forgot the loan. That was Tabor. But not these newcomers who were settling and growing prosperous in Colorado. ”

“ Tabor, the central position, a mountain whose summit is 1500 feet above the plain, is bare and shapeless on the south, but to the north it is steep, and wooded with oaks and thickets in which the fallow-deer finds a home. About three miles west are the springs from which the Kishon first rises, and from this point a chain of pools and springs, fringed with reeds and rushes, marks, even in the dry season, the course of the river. Along this line, at the base of the northern hills, the chariots and horsemen of Sisera fled. ”

“ The next instant a cloud of arrows poured into the balcony, but already Talabor was down in the court and rushing to the walls, whence Master Peter's famous dog-keeper and some of the garrison had already discharged their arrows with deadly effect.
Dora had quite recovered herself.
As for Libor, he had vanished as completely as if he had never been there.
"If I could only clap eyes on that scoundrel!" cried Talabor furiously. "Ah! there! that's he! with his head buried in a cowl! cowardly dog!" ”

“ Tabor’s lonely cabin on Fryer Hill. When the couple peered through the window, they discovered her prostrate form.
The once proud beauty was dead. Leadville, Denver, Central City and the world reacted immediately, producing a host of memories to round out the details of her extraordinary career. Other reminiscences came from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where she was born, and from Washington, D. C., where she had married Tabor, President Arthur and several members of the cabinet in attendance at the wedding. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ What has come to you all?" Then as Mr. Tabor hesitated for an answer, she turned with a despairing little gesture to her daughter. "You tell me what it is, Miriam," she cried.
Mr. Tabor rose from the table. "With your permission, my dear, Crosby and I will go out and smoke," he said. "There isn't anything the matter. You only imagine it, and you need Lady to tell you so."
Mrs. Tabor turned to me quickly. "You can smoke here just as well," she said hurriedly, "I like it. And besides, you are the only one who seems to have anything to say this evening. ”

“ Tabor, do come in. I’m all alone. And being Sunday night, the servants are all out—had to answer the door, myself.”
He led me into a gloomy spacious room lit only by one reading lamp and by the flames from the fireplace.
“It’s a pretty bad night for you to be out,” he remarked.
“Oh, I don’t mind. It’s nothing to the Leadville blizzards I face all the time up at the mine. I’m used to a hard life.” ”

“ You've heard that saying, ain't you, Miss Tabor?"
"Yes."
"Well, I tell YOU," she exclaimed, noisily, "there's plenty ladies and gen'lemen in this town that's like that!"
Her laughter did not cease; it became louder and shriller. It had been, until now, a mere lubrication of the conversation, helping to make her easier in Miss Tabor's presence, but as it increased in shrillness, she seemed to be losing control of herself, as if her laughter were getting away with her; she was not far from hysteria, when it stopped with a gasp, and she sat up straight in her chair, white and rigid. ”

“ You never saw a windmill yet without swearing it was a green dragon with yellow eyes and a three-pronged tail. They are not half so mysterious as you are with that hush-hush expression on your innocent countenance. Tabor's an importer, with a flourishing business in red ink and spaghetti and other products of Sunny It'. Mrs. Tabor's a dear little soul with nerves and an occasional palpitation. Lady's a pippin, and Reid's a strenuous sawbones that lost half a second once in [Pg 67] his youth and has been chasing it ever since. You've been reading too much classical literature. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Over the telephone next morning, Mr. Tabor was ominously agreeable. "Certainly," he said. "You have a perfect right to the reason. When you have it, I think you will agree that you have no more cause for complaint than you have for remaining in the neighborhood. I will be down at once."
Half an hour later he was seated in my room, polished, choleric, aquiline, a man to be a fierce friend or a difficult enemy. ”

“ If we are attacked we will defend ourselves, and you must all be wanted elsewhere, if it is true, as I hear, that the Tartars have invaded the country."
"Dearest young lady! Your father will be greatly vexed by this obstinacy."
"That's enough, Libor!" said Talabor, with a sign to Dora, who drew back. "We shall let no one into the castle, not even Master Peter's own brother, unless he can show us Master Peter's ring, for those were his private instructions to me." ”

“ 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. ”