Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/321

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AMERICAN PERSECUTION OF THE ENEMIES OF DIAZ
285

of the sleuths was made August 23, and Ambassador Creel came all the way from Washington to be on hand and see that things went off smoothly. On the night of August 22 Creel was given a banquet by Mexican concessionaires having headquarters in Los Angeles and the following day he sat in his hotel and waited for news that his thugs had gotten their victims as planned.

But the outcries of Magon and his friends collected a crowd and it became impossible to kidnap them. So unprepared were the officers for a mere arrest case that when they got their prisoners to jail they were at a loss to know what charge to place against them, so they put them down on the police books as "resisting an officer!"

Ambassador Creel then proceeded to hire some of the highest priced lawyers in Southern California to devise ways and means for getting the prisoners down into Mexico. These lawyers were ex-Governor Henry T. Gage, Gray, Barker and Bowen, partners of U. S. Senator Flint; and Horace H. Appel. When the cases came into court their names were announced by the public prosecutor as special counsel and always during the hearings one or more of them was personally in attendance.

The "officers" who beat the refugees nearly to death and then charged them with resisting an officer—although they had not even procured a warrant—were Thomas H. Furlong, head of the Furlong Detective Agency of St. Louis, chief refugee-hunter for Diaz, an assistant Furlong detective, and two Los Angeles city detectives, the notorious Talamantes and Rico.

For months previous to the arrest of Magon and his associates a card offering $20,000 for their apprehension was circulated about the United States. That the city