“It’s all a pack of lies,” I told anyone who asked me about it. But the story as a whole was more nearly right than I would care to admit especially considering its sneering tone. Of course, there are many inaccuracies like referring to Tabor as “Haw” (which no one ever called him in real life) and some straight geographical and historical untruths, such as having the Arkansas flow in Clear Creek Valley and talking of Central City as a collection of shanties when it is all brick or stone. The author was most unkind to me and talked about my guarding the mine with a shotgun, when in actuality I have never owned a shotgun that worked. It is true that I do not like strangers and I have several ways of dealing with them. If someone knocks, I peek out the corner of the window (which was once shaded by coarse lace, then burlap and finally newspapers), lifting just a tiny flap so as to show only one eye. If they see me and recognize me, I say I’m taking a bath—and I have been known to give that same answer all day long to a series of callers!
Sometimes I alter my voice and say, “Mrs. Tabor is downtown—I am the night watchman,” (as I did when Sue Bonnie was making her first efforts to meet me) and sometimes I just sit as quiet as a mossy stone, pretending the cabin is uninhabited.
Nevertheless, the author of “Silver Dollar” did me a real service in bringing me many unseen friends and correspondents all across the United States. Carloads of people flock up Little Stray Horse Gulch each summer, seeking a glimpse of me, so many cars that I have renamed that road My Boulevard!
But I never speak to them or admit them to my cabin except, occasionally, when they come properly escorted by a Leadville friend. And when I go to town, I frequent the alleys as much as possible, my figure dressed in my long, black skirt and coat, my legs shrouded in burlap and twine and my face hidden by the perennial auto-cap with its visor and draping veil. I, who used to vaunt my public appearances in the streets by the most elegant dresses, matched by gay floating-ruffled parasols and by my liveried brougham and team, now skulk along beside the garbage cans and refuse.
When the movie “Silver Dollar” had its premiere in Denver late in 1932, the management approached me with an offer of cash and my expenses to Denver to be present. “No, I will not go,” I replied firmly. “I can’t leave the mine.” (Actually I couldn’t bear to see myself and all that I hold dear maligned.)
“I don’t suppose you’d let us have some ore, then, from the Matchless? We want to have an historical exhibition in the foyer of everything we can get that relates to the Tabor mine.”
“Certainly,” I replied. “I’d be delighted. That’s quite different. Tabor was a great miner and the Matchless is Colorado’s most famous mine—naturally people will be interested.”
I, myself, escorted the men out on the dump and helped them pick up a gunny sack full of the richest bits of ore we could find. When they had filled their sack, I waved them pleasantly on their way.
“Don’t believe all you see,” I said. “I’m not half as bad as in the book.”
A couple of years later the motion picture came to Buena Vista and my friends, Joe Dewar and Lucille Frazier, asked me to motor down with them to see it. They were to keep our going a secret, I would wear a veil, dress differently than usual, and sit in the back of the theater so that no one would recognize me.