I put my hand in Mr. Tabor’s large one and it seemed to me as if I never wanted to withdraw it. What was he thinking at that moment, I wondered? Was he feeling the electric magnetism in the touch of my hand as I was in his? Or was I just another one of the women that Augusta Tabor would carp about? “Sit down, Mrs. Doe, and order anything you want on the menu. No point in going back to the show when we can sit here and entertain as pretty a young woman as you, is there Bill? Here’s a little lady we’ll have to get to know.” _Chapter Three_ Leadville, the Saddle Rock Cafe, and the gay, boisterous mining and promoting crowd about me all swam dizzily away from my consciousness as I dropped down in a chair between the great silver king, Horace Tabor, and his manager, Bill Bush. I was in love! That was all I knew. I was in love with a married man. I, a divorced woman, whose future with Jake was merely a nebulous suggestion. Yet here I was, beside the man I had dreamed of for so long— “Surely, Bill, we should have champagne on this auspicious occasion?” Mr. Tabor went on. The evening passed in one of those heavenly hazes in which afterward you want to remember every word, every glance, every happening, yet nothing remains but a roseate glow. We stayed there at the table, laughing and talking and drinking. Mostly we gossiped about people in Central City that Mr. Tabor and I knew of in common—Judge Belford, George Randolph and so on—or else about the operating conditions at the various mines there that I had heard talked about. But there was one person whose name I never spoke—Jacob Sands. I wondered how much Bill Bush knew—or what he thought he knew. But nothing of this was hinted by either of us. When the performance across Harrison Avenue at the Tabor Opera House was finished, Bill Bush excused himself, saying: “I have some accounts to go over before I turn in—see you in the morning, Governor.” Then the greatest man in Colorado leaned toward me and said: “Now tell me about yourself.” I gasped and began in little gurgles, but it was very easy talking to him. Little by little, I told him the whole story of my life as I have recounted it here—the high hopes of my marriage, my great reverence and love of the Colorado mountains, my excitement over the mining world, and finally, since his piercing eyes were not piercing when they looked at me, but soft and mellow and understanding, I told him, rather tearfully about Harvey and Jake, and why I was in Leadville. “So you don’t want to marry Jake Sands—but think you ought to because of the money he’s spent helping you out?” “Yes.” “Well, I tell you what. I’ve got plenty of money, more’n I know what to do with. Let me give you enough to pay this fellow back and carry you along for a while, Something’s bound to turn up.” This dazzling offer resounded in my ears like the explosion of dynamite. “Why, Governor Tabor, I couldn’t let you do that!”