“Oh, don’t say that!” I almost screamed.
The teamster turned around and stared at me.
“You’re all right—they won’t shoot you. It’s them damned slave-driving millionaires they’re after.”
And Tabor was the one they were after most! But nothing happened. A policeman pulled Colonel Bohn off his horse and rushed him to the jail “for disturbing the peace,” although it was more likely for safe-keeping. Finally, both sides of the fray began to split up in little groups, then to disperse and go home. The immediate danger was over. But I knew now what it was like to be in love with a prominent man in an important political office. It meant helpless fear of an assassin’s bullet. And fear was a new emotion to me—that’s where love had brought me. I shuddered and turned inward to the Clarendon.
Martial law was declared some hours later and slowly the miners went back to work, having lost their cause. There was covert grumbling in the saloons and on the streets for some time, but at last, life got back to normal, and the regular hum of the pumps at all the mines around filled the night again.
That July, ex-President Grant came to Leadville for a ten-day visit in and about the mining country. He came as Tabor’s guest and Tabor, as lieutenant-governor, headed a committee sent down to meet the general’s private car. It was coming on the D.&R.G. tracks from Manitou where the great man and his wife had been taking the waters. The committee accompanied the presidential party into camp over a road lighted the last miles with enormous bonfires. I was very thrilled at the idea of the President actually being in my hotel. After he had toured the mines and smelters and addressed discharged soldiers from the Civil War, a banquet was given him at the Clarendon on the last of his three days in the town proper.
The luxuriousness of the scene was impressive. The Leadville Chronicle was printed on white satin to give to the President at the banquet as a souvenir of his visit. The gift made such a tremendous impression on him that when he died, he willed it to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington where it may still be seen.
Tabor, rather bewildered and shame-faced, came to me afterward in our suite and said:
“Darling, I know the President wanted to meet you more than anyone else in Leadville. I saw him look at you several times—you are always the most beautiful woman in any gathering. But you know this mining camp and how it talks. We must be discreet.”
“Yes, I understand perfectly,”—and I leaned over and kissed his forehead. He had thrown himself down rather disconsolately in a big overstuffed chair, and now he gathered me into his lap. We were locked in each other’s embrace for some minutes. We were happy just to be together.