“Why don’t you give up? Let the mine go for the mortgage?” a Denver banker to whom I appealed for help said to me. “It’s all worked out—and anyway it’s paid you a small steady income for years.”
“I should say not!” I replied with vehemence. “I shall never let the Matchless go—not while there is breath in my body to find a way to fight for it. The mine is a Golconda.”
Doubting eyes greeted my statement and the money was refused. I was used to that—and in the quiet loneliness of my cabin or during my sombre meditations in church even I, too, occasionally doubted. Yet never would I let that be known. My great husband, Tabor, could not have spoken other than truthfully and prophetically from his deathbed and if I was to live true to his command, I must always believe.
“I have no reason for living if I do not have faith in the Matchless. No dear one is left to me. I have only this one legacy of my great love. It is my mission and my life,” were the thoughts that ran through my head as I left the banker’s office. But now I had exhausted my last resource. No future was ahead of me, no work to do and no place to live. The mine was doomed—and my heart sank to the lowest depths.
During that entire weekend, I wandered about Denver in a daze, telling my rosary in first one church and then another. About my neck, instead of beads, I always wore a long black shoelace knotted intermittently to form beads and holding a large plain wooden cross. Friends gave me other rosaries but I clung to my improvised string.
In some ways, my plain bedraggled habit, my make-shift rosary, my legs strapped in gunny sack and twine and my grey shawl over the black dress seemed only a just penance for the clothing extravagances and sins of my youth. I did not like to explain my attitude to most people—although I sometimes mentioned my feeling to friends or Fathers who were truly devout Catholics—but this thought gave me the courage to forget how I looked. Those rags were a chosen punishment for former vanity.
“Dear God, help me to save the Matchless,” I prayed on my shoestring over and over again all day that Sunday. Suddenly as I knelt in St. Elizabeth’s an inspiration came to me bathed in a white light. Gathering up my full skirt, I hurried from the church and headed toward the corner of Ninth and Pennsylvania Sts. and the home of J. K. Mullen. He was a millionaire miller and a liberal donor to many Catholic charities.
Outside in the night air it had begun to snow but I plodded on resolutely. By the time I had reached his dignified old mansion, it was past nine o’clock and I was afraid I should find no one home. But summoning a show of boldness, I rang the doorbell.
For a long time, there was no answer. I was cold and nervous, apart from my anxiety about the mine. I shifted my weight from one foot to another trying to make up my mind to ring again. At last I was sure enough to press the button. This time, after a short wait, the door slowly opened and revealed Mr. Mullen, himself.
“Good evening,” I said pleasantly. “I’m Mrs. Tabor and I wondered if I might see you, although”—and laughed with that same musical laugh that had charmed so many illustrious men in its day—“it’s a rather odd time for a call.”