Luckily, the court struck the complaint from the record as indecent and irrelevant. But the harm had been done. Tabor’s political prestige again waned. Tabor and Bush never made up this nasty quarrel, although Bush remained a friend and partner of young Maxcy Tabor, who had sided with Augusta at the time of the divorce. I had always distrusted Bush and now hated him.
“May the devil destroy his soul!” I used to say to Tabor.
Augusta and I met twice.
The first time was when I was living at the Windsor Hotel toward the end of 1881 and before I had moved to the American House. I was very surprised one afternoon to have the bellboy present a hand-written card on a salver. It read “Mrs. Augusta L. Tabor” and startled me so that I never found out what the “L” stood for—Augusta’s maiden name was Pierce.
In December of 1880 Augusta had bought out Mr. Charles Hall’s interest in the Windsor Hotel, and she had made a point of coming down and carefully going over the books with Bill Bush and Maxcy Tabor who was employed in the office. Personally, I had a feeling that she had done this not only to make a good investment but to keep a closer eye on Tabor’s goings and comings. That particular day, he was away on business, and she undoubtedly knew it.
I had been reading a new novel by Georgia Craink and my thoughts were far away. I didn’t want to receive Augusta but I knew it would only make more trouble if I didn’t. So I told the bellboy to show Mrs. Tabor up.
It was one of the most uncomfortable interviews I ever had. Augusta kept sniffling about “Hod” (as she called Horace) and his disgusting taste in bad women. She talked about two of Horace’s former mistresses—Alice Morgan, a woman who did a club-swinging act at the Grand Central in Leadville, and Willie Deville, a common prostitute, whom he had found in Lizzie Allen’s parlor house in Chicago. Tabor had brought her back to Denver and set her up lavishly. Later, he had taken Willie on trips to St. Louis and New York, but terminated his affair with her by a gift of $5,000, claiming she talked too much.
“Why do you tell me these things?” I asked Augusta with as much steel as I could put into my voice. Inwardly, I was furious.
“To show you that if he tired of them, Hod’s sure to tire of you.”
“In that case, there’s nothing more to say, Mrs. Tabor. I do not want your confidences.”