So I have lived on—‘existed on’ would be a more correct statement. I have been lonely, blue, often cold and starving in the winters, and beset by many torments. But I have been sustained by a great faith and a great love. I have lived with courage and a cheery smile for my friends. As I look out over the abandoned shaft-houses and dumps of the fabulous Fryer Hill ruins, over the partially deserted town of Leadville to the glorious beauty of Colorado’s highest mountains, I know that I have surely expiated my last sin and that I have fulfilled the trust my dear Tabor put in me when he said:
“Hang on to the Matchless.”
Farewell
The last day anyone saw Mrs. Tabor alive was February 20, 1935. On that morning, she broke her way through deep snow around the Robert E. Lee mine which adjoined the Matchless on Fryer Hill, and walked the mile or more into the town of Leadville. Her old black dress was horribly torn and the twine and gunny sack wrappings on her feet were dripping wet because she had repeatedly fallen through the lowest snow crust into the melting freshets of running water beneath. The Zaitz delivery truck ran her home and let her out in Little Stray Horse Gulch beyond the abandoned railroad trestle (now gone), as close to the Matchless as it was possible to get. She walked off through the snow, carrying her bag of groceries and waving good-bye to the delivery boy, Elmer Kutzlub (now the owner of his own grocery store in Leadville).
Nothing more was known of her for two weeks although Sue Bonnie observed smoke issuing from her stack during some few days of that time. Then a fresh blizzard blew up, blotting out all vision for three days. When the storm cleared, Sue Bonnie, seeing from her own cabin on the outskirts of Leadville that Mrs. Tabor’s stack was smokeless, became worried. She tried to reach her friend through the heavy fall of new snow but was not strong enough to make it. Sue had to wait until she could obtain help from Tom French to break a trail.
When they reached the cabin, all was silence. They broke a window and forced an entry. Mrs. Tabor’s body, in the shape of a cross, was frozen stiff on the floor.
After the couple found Mrs. Tabor’s emaciated form and her death was broadcast to the world, fourteen trunks of her earlier belongings turned up in a Denver warehouse and in the basement of St. Vincent’s hospital in Leadville. But there was no other estate.
Burial posed a problem, both the question of place and the matter of expenses. But unsolicited donations poured into Leadville, sufficient to present a solution on both counts. The J. K. Mullen heirs, particularly the Oscar Malos, aided munificently. An interesting sidelight, during those days of indecision, was a bit of information given by Jim Corbett, the mortician, who said there were almost no grey hairs on her head. This corroborated Mrs. Tabor’s claim that the one element of beauty left to her toward the end was her hair; for that reason she always wore the horrid motoring cap to hide it, punishing herself for the past.
Some weeks later, Baby Doe’s body was shipped to Denver and buried in Mt. Olivet cemetery beside that of Horace Tabor who, in the meantime, had been moved from the now abandoned Calvary plot. At long last, after thirty-five years vigil, peace and reunion with her adored Tabor had come to Baby Doe’s troubled soul.
And there, she rests today. On the edge of the plains where, a few miles beyond, the rampart of the Rockies bulks protectingly against the fair blue sky, little Lizzie McCourt of Oshkosh has found her final defense.