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 gave him a railroad pass, and brought him into relations with the men who manipulated state affairs; also it made him a silent partner of Lige Bemis in Garrison County politics.
But even when he was county commissioner, less than two dozen years old, he was a force in Sycamore Ridge, and there were days when he had four or five thousand dollars to his credit in General Hendricks' bank.

The general used to look over the daily balances and stroke his iron-gray beard and say: "Robert, John is doing well to-day.