eleven o'clock
A million would not have tempted him . He was in that game ; yet ten days after he refused the offer of Minneola , he tried to blackmail his United States senator out of fifty dollars , and sold his vote to a candidate for state printer for one hundred dollars and flashed the bill around Sycamore Ridge proudly for a week before spending it . So Gabriel Carnine must not be blamed if in that paper on Minneola , before the Old Settlers ' Association , he let out the pent-up wrath of thirty years ; and also if in the discussion General Ward unsealed his lips for the first time and blighted the myth that told how a hundred Minneola men had captured the court-house yard on the night that John Barclay and Bob Hendricks rode home from their captivity to sign the tax levy . Legend has always said that Lige Bemis , riding half a mile ahead of the others that night , came to the courtyard ; found it guarded by Minneola men , rode back , met John and Bob and the general crossing the bridge over the old ford of the Sycamore , and told them that they could not get into the court-house until the men came up who had ridden out to rescue the commissioners , -- perhaps a quarter of an hour behind the others , -- and that even then there must be a fight of 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 ?