doubtful issue; and further that it was after eleven o'clock, and soon
would be too late to sign the levy. The forty thousand people in
Garrison County have believed for thirty years that finding the
court-house yard in possession of the enemy, Bemis suggested going
through the cave by the Barclays' home, which had its west opening in
the wall of the basement of the court-house; and furthermore,
tradition has said that Bemis led John and Bob through the cave, and
with crowbars and hammers they made a man-sized hole in the wall,
crawled through it, mounted the basement stairs, unlocked the
commissioners' room, held their meeting in darkness, and five minutes
before twelve o'clock astonished the invading forces by lighting a
lamp in their room, signing the levy that Bemis, as county attorney,
had prepared the Sunday before, and slipping with it into the
basement, through the cave and back to the troop of horsemen as they
were jogging across the bridge on their 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 reëlection 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