BITTER FOES
The first Mrs. Tabor, or the second, would tell her coachman to pass the other’s carriage if they saw each other out driving. Their enmity never relented the least bit during Augusta’s life.
The camp fell off rapidly and by autumn was practically deserted. The Tabors decided to try the other side of the Mosquito Range and the booming camp of Buckskin Joe. Again they opened a store and again it was selected as the post office. Horace had no better luck with mining in South Park than in Oro and so resigned himself to their small business venture.
But he still dreamt of bonanzas and hopefully grubstaked penniless prospectors. The agreement was that in return for supplies, which he gave them, they would share any rich finds. Augusta viewed the practice with disfavor.
When the Printer Boy mine was expanded in 1868 in California Gulch, the Tabors moved back to Oro City. This time they erected a four-room log cabin about a mile above the present site of Leadville and settled down to their usual routine of running a general store. For ten more years, bringing the total to eighteen, Augusta kept at her labors and Horace cherished his dreams.
As the years passed, Augusta’s natural New England frankness grew more tart. She found Horace’s easy-going ways irritating. His off-hand generosities made no sense to a woman who knew the value of a hard-earned dollar. Or, perhaps, some psychic intuition warned Augusta that that very same trait would bring her eventual heart-break, and she was trying subconsciously to ward off the blow.
The blow came disguised as good fortune. In 1877 the news leaked out that those heavy particles of black sand, which had been so difficult for the placer miners to separate from gold, were really bits of lead-silver carbonates. A second rush to California Gulch began. The newcomers were silver-seekers and chose the lower part of the gulch in which to settle. The Tabors decided to move their Oro City store a mile farther down, and selected a site on the south side of Chestnut Street, a door below the Harrison Avenue corner. They built a story-and-a-half log and frame building with sleeping quarters upstairs, and dining and kitchen arrangements to the rear.
AUGUSTA’S HOUSE