1.1 “It must have been the wind.” Mum whispered. “I wonder what’s keeping your father.”

Payne Township, Sedgwick County, Kansas - February 1874

 

Mum looked over her shoulder and then turned completely away from the fire she was stoking. She

froze in place, listening. ARJ watched his mother closely as he set the log he was about to hand her back on the pile. Every evening the sunset plunged them into the deep cold of Kansas February. Since the sun set an hour ago, the main room of the cabin had turned dark and chilly except for the warmth and light coming from the dancing fire.

 

Mum, ARJ, and even four-year-old John William stood like statues, listening in the silence.

 

“It must have been the wind.” Mum whispered. “I wonder what’s keeping your father.”

 

She walked to the front door and slid the cross bar into place. That made ARJ nervous since that was normally his father’s job.

 

Mum walked to a wooden crate padded with blankets, a makeshift cradle, that sat on the floor by the bed. She bent and touched baby Eva Anna, still sleeping, and pulled the blanket up under her chin.

 

She walked to the shuttered window and froze again, listening. John William whimpered.

 

“Where’s Daddy?” he asked.

 

“ARJ, will you take your brother and go sit on the bed near the baby?”

 

“What’s wrong?” ARJ asked.

 

“Arthur Robert Jarman.” Mum whispered. “Do as I say.”

 

ARJ guided John William to the bed where they sat close together. He pulled the edge of the quilt over his brother, keeping his eye on Mum who had walked back to the door. He saw her look up at the rifle that hung over the cabin door.

 

‘What did she hear?’

 

A light flickered through the cracks of the shutter and then between the boards on the front of the house. Suddenly there was the sound of running footsteps coming toward the cabin.

 

Boom – boom – boom!

 

The butt of a gun landed angrily on their door.

 

Everyone inside cried out at the same time, Eva Anna, the loudest.

 

ARJ bounded off the bed and toward Mum. She glanced at him and the others, placing her left hand on her pregnant belly as she lifted her right hand to touch the rifle above the door.

 

“Son, stay with JW and the baby like I asked you.”

 

ARJ choked back tears! He didn’t want to be the brave seven-year-old brother, but he quickly retreated to the bed.

 

A fist struck the door next in an angry throb, causing Mum to jump again, and JW to pull the quilt over his head.

 

“Dibbens! Come out here!” A stranger's voice yelled from the other side of the door.

 

ARJ crawled across the quilt on his stomach and put his eye up to a crack in the wall. Frigid air washed over his eyeball but the sight outside chilled the rest of him. Torches in the hands of several men crackled and burned in the dark night, lighting the faces of twenty or thirty men who filled the farmyard.

 

‘Why were they so angry? And where’s Dad?’

 

“Dibbens! We aren’t leaving until you come out!” Another voice yelled.

 

Mum reached up with both hands and pulled the gun off the wall.