[1] I was taken before the governor that morning. The governor said to me, "I am going to turn you free but you must not go back to the strike zone!"

[2] "Governor," I said, "I am going back."

[3] "I think you ought to take my advice," he said, "and do what I think you ought to do."

[4] "Governor," said I, "if Washington took instructions from such as you, we would be under King George's descendants yet! If Lincoln took instructions from you, Grant would never have gone to Gettysburg. I think I had better not take your orders."

[5] I stayed on a week in Denver. Then I got a ticket and sleeper1 for Trinidad. Across the aisle from me was Reno, Rockefeller's detective. Very early in the morning, soldiers awakened me.

[6] "Get up," they said, "and get off at the next stop!"

[7] I got up, of course, and with the soldiers I got off at Walsenburg, fifty miles from Trinidad. The engineer and the fireman left their train when they saw the soldiers putting me off.

[8] "What are you going to do with that old woman?" they said. "We won't run the train till we know!"

[9] The soldiers did not reply.

[10] "Boys," I said, "go back on your engine. Some day it will be all right."

[11] Tears came trickling down their cheeks, and when they wiped them away, there were long, black streaks on their faces.

[12] I was put in the cellar under the courthouse. It was a cold, terrible place, without heat, damp and dark. I slept in my clothes by day, and at night I fought great sewer rats with a beer bottle. "If I were out of this dungeon," thought I, "I would be fighting the human sewer rats anyway!"

[13] For twenty-six days I was held a military prisoner in that black hole. I would not give in. I would not leave the state. At any time, if I would do so, I could have my freedom. General Chase and his bandits thought that by keeping me in that cold cellar, I would catch the flue or pneumonia, and that would settle for them what to do with "old Mother Jones."

[14] Colonel Berdiker, in charge of me, said, "Mother, I have never been placed in a position as painful as this. Won't you go to Denver and leave the strike field?"

[15] "No, Colonel, I will not," said I.

[16] The hours dragged underground. Day was perpetual twilight and night was deep night. I watched people's feet from my cellar window; miners' feet in old shoes; soldiers' feet, well shod in government leather; the shoes of women with the heels run down; the dilapidated shoes of children; barefooted boys. The children would scrooch2 down and wave to me but the soldiers shooed them off.

[17] One morning when my hard bread and sloppy coffee were brought to me, Colonel Berdiker said to me, "Mother, don't eat that stuff!" After that he sent my breakfast to me—good, plain food. He was a man with a heart, who perhaps imagined his own mother imprisoned in a cellar with the sewer rats' union.

[18] The colonel came to me one day and told me that my lawyers had obtained a habeas corpus3 for me and that I was to be released; that the military would give me a ticket to any place I desired.

[19] "Colonel," said I, "I can accept nothing from men whose business it is to shoot down my class whenever they strike for decent wages. I prefer to walk."

[20] "All right, Mother," said he, "Goodbye!"


Which paragraph provides the best evidence to support the idea that Mother Jones did not trust the governor?

A.
paragraph 18
B.
paragraph 4
C.
paragraph 2
D.
paragraph 14