Page:Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925).djvu/168

Rh The mule was chewing grass and the little lad was making a willow whistle. I drove on. That night I held my meeting.

But there weren't any five hundred armed men in the mountains. Just a few jack rabbits, perhaps, but I had scared that gang of cold blooded, hired murderers and Red Warrior camp was organized.

The miners asked me to come up to Wineberg, a camp in the Creek district. Every road belonged to the coal company. Only the bed of the creek was a public road. At that time of the year—early spring—the water in the creek was high.

I started for Wineberg accompanied by a newspaperman, named West, of the Baltimore Sun. We walked along the railroad track.

Again I met the gunmen with their revolvers and machine guns. Mayfield was there, too.

"You can't walk here!" he growled. "Private property!"

"You don't mean to say you are going to make that old lady walk that creek in that ice cold water, do you?" said the reporter.

"It's too damn good for her! She won't walk it!" he laughed.

"Won't I?" said I. I took off my shoes, rolled up my skirt and walked the creek.

At Wineberg the miners, standing in the creek and on its edges, met me. With our feet in water we held a meeting. Holding their shoes