r way back from Carnine's farm.
And here are the marks of General Ward's axe--verified by Gabriel
Carnine: first, that there were no Minneola invaders in possession of
the court-house, but only a dozen visitors loafing about town that
night to watch developments; second, that the regular pickets were out
as usual, and an invading force could not have stolen in; and third,
that Bemis knew it, but as his political fortunes were low, he rode
ahead of the others, hatched up the cock-and-bull story about the
guarded court-house, and persuaded the boys to let him lead them into
a romantic adventure that would sound well in the campaign and help to
insure his reelection the following year. In view of the general's
remarks and Gabriel Carnine's corroborative statement, and in view of
the bitterness with which Carnine assailed the whole Sycamore Ridge
campaign, how can a truthful chronicler use the episode at all?
History is a fickle goddess, and perhaps Pontius Pilate, being human
and used to human errors and human weakness, is not so much to blame
for asking, "What is truth?" and then turning away before he had the
answer.

Walking home from the meeting through Mary Barclay Park, Barclay's
mind wandered back to the days when he won his first important
lawsuit--the suit brought by Minneola to prevent the collection of
taxes under the midnight levy to build the court-house. It was that
lawsuit which brought him to the attention of the legal department of
the Fifth Parallel Railroad Company, and his employment by that
company to defeat the bonds of its narrow-gauged competitor, that was
seeking entrance into Garrison County, was the beginning of his
career. And in that fight to defeat the narrow-gauged railroad, the
people of Garrison County learned something of Barclay as well. He and
Bemis went over the county together,--the little fox and the old
coyote, the people called them,--and where men were for sale, Bemis
bought them, and where they were timid, John threatened them, and
where they were neither, both John and Bemis fought with a ferocity
that made men hate but respect the pair. And so though the Fifth
Parallel Railroad never came to the Ridge, its successor, the Corn
Belt Road, did come, and in '74 John spoke in every schoolhouse in the
county, urging the people to vote the bonds for the Corn Belt Road,
and his employment as local attorney for the company marked his first
step into the field of state politics. For it g