BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

FOUR MEXICAN STRIKES 217
every point, met this force of men at Naco and led them
across the line. The crossing was disputed by the Mexican
customs official, who swore that the invaders might
pass only over his dead body. With leveled rifle this
man faced the governor of his state and the three hundred
foreigners, and refused to yield until Yzabal showed
an order signed by General Diaz permitting the invasion.
Thus three hundred American citizens, some of them
government employes, on June 2, 1906, violated the laws
of the United States, the same laws that Magon and
his friends are accused of merely conspiring to violate,
and yet not one of them, not even Greene, the man who
knew the situation and was extremely culpable, was ever
prosecuted. Moreover, Ranger Captain Rhynning, who
accepted an appointment of Governor Yzahal to command
this force of Americans, instead of being deposed
from his position, was afterwards promoted. At this
writing he holds the fat job of warden of the territorial
penitentiary at Florence, Arizona.
The rank and file of those three hundred men were
hardly to be blamed for their act, for Greene completely
fooled them. They thought they were invading Mexico
to save some American women and children. When
they arrived in Cananea on the evening of the second
day, they discovered that they had been tricked, and
the following day they returned without having taken
part in the massacres of these early da ys of June.
But with the Mexican soldiers and rurale forces which
poured into Cananea that same night it was different.
They were under the orders of Yzahal, Greene and Corral,
and they killed, as they were told to do. There
was a company of cavalry under Colonel Barron. There
were one thousand infantrymen under General Luis