For years Augusta hoped that Baby Doe would tire of Horace and, crestfallen, he would come back to his first wife. She thought that when the money was gone, the young hussy would flit. She told reporters she was building up her own fortune and hanging on to her large house in order that she might take care of Tabor in his old age. But Augusta was wrong. She had underestimated her rival. When the Silver Panic of 1893 reduced the former millionaire to poverty, his pretty blonde wife stuck like glue. Belatedly Augusta realized the true character of Baby Doe. In 1892 the first Mrs. Tabor sold her house on Broadway and moved across the street to the newly-opened Brown Palace Hotel. Although Maxcy and Bill Bush were the managers and lived there also, Augusta did not enjoy hotel life. Her health was starting to fail and she went to California for the winter, seeking a milder climate. There in Pasadena, on February 1, 1895, at the age of sixty-two she died, her social position still secure, if not showy, and her fortune built to a million and a half dollars. She said in her own words when Tabor was at his richest: “I feel that in those early years of self-sacrifice, hard labor, and economy, I laid the foundation for Mr. Tabor’s immense wealth. Had I not stayed with him and worked by his side, he would have been discouraged, returned to the stone-cutting trade and so lost his big opportunity.” All Colorado agreed with her at the time—and then the mills of the Gods ground slowly and exceedingly fine. Tabor’s immense wealth evaporated. But its going did not bring Horace back to her; he clung to Baby Doe until the end, four years after Augusta’s death. Never once was there the slightest rumor of any infidelity of his to her after 1881 and none of Baby Doe to him after their first meeting. It must have been galling to Augusta. Maxcy Tabor inherited the money his mother had husbanded with such business acumen. He brought her body back from California and she was buried in Riverside cemetery. With the passage of the years Maxcy was laid to rest in Fairmount beside his wife; and Horace Tabor, in Mt. Olivet beside Baby Doe. Augusta lies alone in an old-fashioned cemetery, as alone as she lived her last fifteen years, terribly alone. For many years of her middle life Augusta was called “Leadville’s First Lady.” The nickname was spoken in affection and in admiration, and she was interviewed for the Leadville papers under that heading. Yes, she was a first lady in many ways, courageous and industrious and civic. The tragedy of her life lay in the fact that, although she was beloved of many, she lost the key to the only heart she wanted. _Acknowledgments_ (Reprinted from earlier editions for the fifth in 1968)