Mayfield’s lips quivered like a tiger’s deprived of its flesh.
“Advance!” he said to the miners.
They came forward. I kept my hand on the gun. The miners were searched. There were no guns on them. They were allowed to pass.
I went down the side of the hill to my buggy. 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.