In October 1884, after seven drunken cowboys committed horrific acts against two Mexican men in Upper Frisco, where El Burro was brutally tortured and Epitacio Martinez was bound and shot for target practice, both surviving, deputy sheriff Pedro Sarracino rode to Socorro for help. Nineteen-year-old deputy Elfego Baca returned with him intent on seeking justice. Three days later, Baca arrested a cowboy after seeing him assault another man and fire several rounds from his pistol, despite Justice of the Peace Lopez's hopelessness about the power of the Slaughter outfit. When a large group of cowboys demanded the prisoner's release, Baca shot into the group, wounding one man and scattering them. The next day, eighty enraged ranch hands rode into town intent on freeing the arrested cowboy and avenging the arrest. After a trial released the cowboy, Baca retreated to Geronimo Armijo's jacal and barricaded himself inside, expecting a gunfight. For thirty-six hours he kept up fire from within, pausing only long enough to cook tortillas and beef stew, while mud and picket walls, a sunken floor, and an icon of Nuestra Senora Santa Anna helped protect him against dynamite and some four thousand rounds of gunfire from the Texas cowboys. On the third day, Baca agreed to surrender to deputy Ross from Socorro but refused to give up his guns. Unscathed in the fight, he had killed two cowboys and wounded two more, and the atrocities stopped.