Meantime, all during the year of 1882, subversive political factions were at work to bring pressure on the legislature of one kind and another. When President Garfield had been shot in July of the year before, Chester Arthur succeeded to his position. President Arthur appointed Senator Henry M. Teller to his cabinet. This left a vacancy in one of Colorado’s electoral seats. Governor Pitkin appointed a mediocre politician by the name of George Chilcott to Teller’s place only until the legislature should convene.
“Just did that because he wants the office himself and to spite me,” Tabor explained.
And I heard this opinion verified frequently by other men. The legislature was not to meet until January of the next year, 1883, when they were to elect two senators, one to fill a six-year term, and the other to the thirty days remaining of Teller’s term. Everyone said that Tabor would get the six-year term, even though Governor Pitkin wanted it and had the support of the regular Republican machine. Tabor was so popular.
But Augusta ruined all that. The Durango divorce came through without any hitch in the summer of 1882, and on September 30, Tabor and I met secretly in St. Louis, having gone by different trains. We met in the office of Colonel Dyer, a leading attorney, who summoned John M. Young, a justice of the peace. When we went to the court house to get a license, Tabor took the recorder, C. W. Irwin, aside and fixed it up with him that under no circumstances should our license be included on the list given to the daily press.
“Secretly divorced and secretly remarried,” Tabor said that night, elated as a school boy. “That’ll be something for Augusta to swallow about the man she thinks she can keep tied down! It’s also a good precaution for those scandal mongers at the senate. If they get too nosey, we’ll show them we’re really married.”
I tried to pretend I was as happy as he. But to me, a marriage was only binding when it had been sanctioned by the church and performed by a priest. And I knew Papa would only forgive my transgressions on that basis. I had drifted very far away from much of Father Bonduel’s teachings but the kernel still remained. I had offended against many of the Church’s mandates and of God’s. But I still wanted to be safely back in the fold, living the life of a respectable married woman, devoted to her husband, her children, and her home. With that picture in my mind, I could not join as heartily as I should have wished in the champagne toast Tabor made at a tete-a-tete supper at the old Southern Hotel.
“Here’s to our wedding day!” he exclaimed with sincere joviality.
“Yes,” I agreed, and added with the fervor of the wish that was gnawing at my heart, “here’s to our marriage!”
The New Year of 1883 dawned with both our heads whirling with hopes and fears. Hope ran very high that Tabor would soon be going to Washington for six years and I, with him. Fear besieged us with the thought that Augusta would prevent all this. But two enormous events happened that January.
Augusta sued for divorce and accepted a settlement of their house, the La Veta Place apartment house, and a quarter of a million dollars worth of mining stock, including one half interest in the Tam O’Shanter mine above Aspen. Augusta created a hysterical scene in court, which did Tabor a lot of damage. When the trial was over and she was asked to sign the papers, she turned toward the judge and shrilled in a fearful voice,