"It may not be as bad as it seems," argued Gard, talking against time. "The four of you should be able to get me if you insist on shooting it out. I will get one or two of you, however, and the police will get the rest. I would suggest that it would be wiser for you to let me back slowly out of that door and that you all beat it for Mexico."
The little doctor stiffened stubbornly against the one exit, but before his proposition could be seriously considered there came a loud rapping at the door. The noise of it sounded as though it were made with the butt of a revolver. The Mexicans present stood transfixed with fear. The knocking was repeated with greater vigor. Then a drawling Texas voice sang out:
"Oh, you greasers, lift the latch. This ain't no way to treat visitors."
"Break it in, Captain," called out Gard, who recognized the voice of the Ranger chief. "This bunch is half captured already."
Then came the creaking of door hinges as though a great weight was being thrown against them and, finally, a mighty crash. As the door came in nothing could be seen but the blank side of a thick cotton mattress. Few other things will stop bullets like a cotton mattress and it is therefore an excellent breastwork in an attack which is likely to be met by bullets fired through a door. This was not the first time such an object had been used in Ranger strategy.
Presently the head of a Ranger peered cautiously around the mattress and a request for a parley was made. The Mexicans decided upon discretion and surrendered without a fight. Gard was thus relieved of a very delicate situation.
The four prisoners from the windowless house were loaded into the white-topped wagon. It moved on unostentatiously to other parts of the city and around it the Ranger dragnet tightened. "Red Shirt" Pena was found in the act of boarding a street car to cross the bridge into Juarez. He made fight but a Ranger floored him with a blow from a big forty-five six-shooter. In two hours fifteen of the ringleaders of the El Paso revolutionists were behind prison bars and any expedition that might have been launched in this vicinity was leaderless.
At Brownsville a similar dragnet had operated at about the same time. General Reyes himself succeeded in getting across into Mexico. But the leaders from the American side had been discouraged and failed to follow him even where they were not under arrest. The Mexicans did not rally to the aged general's cause after he entered his native land, as had been expected. Discouraged and heartbroken he surrendered to the Madero authorities a few days later at the little town of Linares, and his revolution was at an end.