He also told me of the unusual characters of the town, all the way from the popular Tabor who was Leadville’s leading citizen down to “the waffle woman” who could be seen any night regularly at twelve o’clock going from saloon to saloon and from dance house to gambling and other dens selling hot waffles. He had stopped her once and spoken to her. She had replied in a cultured voice:
“My best trade is between two and three in the morning after the theatres are out. It is not pleasant being out so late among so rough a class as is found on the streets after midnight and about the saloons. I have led a pleasanter life. Should I tell you who I am and what I have been, you would not believe me....”
His tales fascinated me. But his stories of Tabor and Augusta, Tabor’s severe New England wife with whom he was not getting along, interested me more than any others. Tabor, he said, could be seen almost any evening he was in camp in the lobby or across the street in the Board of Trade which was the gambling house and saloon that got most of the after-theatre trade from the Tabor Opera House, opened a month before in November. Tabor was a splendid poker player and was fond of gambling of all sorts. Since he had made so much money in the last two years, he had started playing roulette for enormous stakes.
“Every night?” I asked. “What does Mrs. Tabor do?”
“Don’t know—she’s down in Denver. But he’s gone pretty wild lately. She don’t like it and I guess nags him terrible. So he just stays out of her way. He likes his liquor and women, too, and naturally that don’t set so good with her. Wouldn’t with any wife. But he spends a lot of time on the move nowadays.”
“What’s he doing in Denver?”
“Oh, he and his right hand man, Bill Bush, are making real estate investments mostly. He’s building the Tabor block at 16th and Larimer Streets—costing two hundred thousand dollars—of stone quarried in Ohio. Expects it to be finished in March. And he bought the Henry P. Brown house on Broadway last winter for a residence. Paid $40,000 for it.”
“He must be a very great man.”
“Some says he is and some says he isn’t. I’ve played poker with him a time or two and he’s right smart at that game. But some of the folks around here say he’s too fond of show and throwin’ his money around. I reckon the Republican politicians trimmed him a heap of money a year ago before they gave him the lieutenant governorship!”
“My, I would love to meet him,” I remarked, thinking that never had a description of any man so captured my imagination. “How old is he?”