When we last left off, William Byers had just escaped the rage of his long time mistress Hattie Sacomb. Elizabeth and William Byers son, Frank, had met Hattie at the gate of their home with a loaded shotgun when she followed his parents home that fateful afternoon. I guess the threat of a butt full of buckshot was enough to persuade her to leave the premises.
The police had already been called and they arrested Hattie 3 blocks away from the Byers' home.
As it turned out, Elizabeth had known about the affair between her husband and Hattie Sacomb, as each had written love letters to the other. A few of William Byers' letters to Sacomb had found their way into Elizabeth's hands. We don't know exactly what precipitated the break-up between Byers and Sacomb, his wife finding out about his indiscretions or William Byers' gubnatorial aspirations. I tend to think that Elizabeth put her foot down, and in reality, William Byers did not want to divorce his wife and leave his family. He just wanted a little som'in' som'in' on the side!
Either way, pulling a pistol on your married lover is not going to make him want you more! Hattie Sacomb, however, wasn't finished with William Byers. She had been dumped by the socially prominent Byers and she wanted him to suffer for it. There was only one little problem for Hattie. William Byers was the editor and owner of the Rocky Mountain News, and on his orders, the paper never published anything of what happened that April day. The other competing papers in Denver also were complicit in keeping the information under wraps. After all, William Byers was a prominent man, both socially and politically, remember he was in line for the Republican nomination for Governor. Byers could make or break you in Denver, depending on what he published in his paper.
But Hattie Sacomb was a woman scorned, and she wasn't letting up. You see, William Byers was only ONE of Hattie's suitors. In fact, Hattie had taken several lovers after arriving in Denver, and one of them was George West, the publisher of the Golden Transcript (who knows, maybe Hattie had a kinky thing for newspaper!). West published the story in his paper 10 days later on April 15th. After William Byers refused to pay $500 in hush money to the Golden paper, the Transcript and the Golden Globe both published salacious letters between Byers and Sacomb over the next few weeks. Hattie had succeeded in shaming William Byers. Because William Byers refused to be blackmailed, he was forced to drop his gubernatorial dream. 
Elizabeth and William Byers remained married until William's death in 1903. Together they raised 2 children, the shotgun toting Frank, and daughter Mary.
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