Augusta realized a fine monthly profit from her Windsor investment, and in April, 1881, she treated herself to a trip abroad for several months. Both Tabor and Bush wanted to buy out her share. Tabor did not like her making “such a damned nuisance of herself” going in and out of the rooms, and Bush wanted to obtain a controlling interest in the hotel. Augusta kept on saying, “No.” No divorce and no hotel sale.
When Augusta returned from Europe, she found her husband had risen to new heights. He was being considered for a senatorship and he had finished building the Tabor Grand Opera House in Denver. The citizens were tendering a ceremony and watch fob to him on the opening night.
Augusta wrote him a letter apologizing for what she “had said in the heat of passion.” She also asked to be allowed to come to the opening night of the Tabor Grand and to go with him to Washington as a senator’s wife. This letter turned up among Baby Doe’s papers at her death. No one knows how, or if, it was answered. But the Tabor box was empty on September 5, 1881, the gala occasion Augusta wanted to attend.
In April, 1882, Augusta instituted a suit for payment of $50,000 a year alimony despite the fact that she was not divorced. She listed Tabor’s holdings and their specific worth, an impressive tabulation, which brought the total to $9,410,000. The suit caused a lot of scandal, damaged Tabor politically, but accomplished nothing for Augusta since it was thrown out of court as illegal.
Augusta gave in on the hotel-sale petition first. She sold her interest in the Windsor to Bush for close to $40,000 in May, 1882. Finally, on January 2, 1883, she gave Tabor a divorce in exchange for property worth about $300,000. She caused a sensation at the divorce trial by reiterating:
“Not willingly, Oh God, not willingly!”
It was this public statement of hers to the judge which made her feel that the divorce was not valid.
Amos Steck, Augusta’s lawyer, summed up the whole five years of public quarreling and scandal when he talked about her to a reporter:
“Oh, she knows all about his practises with lewd women. I never saw such a woman. She is crazy about Tabor. She loves him and that settles it.”
For years Augusta hoped that Baby Doe would tire of Horace and, crestfallen, he would come back to his first wife. She thought that when the money was gone, the young hussy would flit. She told reporters she was building up her own fortune and hanging on to her large house in order that she might take care of Tabor in his old age.