Kansas, December 1897
ARJ stuffed the letter into the pocket of his work shirt.
Arthur Robert Jarman Dibbens (ARJ)
'I'll mail it in town this afternoon.'
He began to straighten his father’s desk. Mum and Dad wouldn’t be home from England until April, and Pleasant Valley Farm was in his hands until then.
As he closed the farm ledger and placed it with the others, his eyes fell on an old, familiar book resting on its spine among them. ARJ immediately recognized The Book of Maps. Unable to resist, he picked it up and slowly ran his hand over the leather cover.
Memories sprang to life in his mind: he and Dad sitting side by side in the little cabin NE of Wichita. Dad had brought the book with him from the Isle of Wight when they emigrated, and they looked at it often when ARJ was homesick as a boy. His fingers found a gap in the pages. He pulled it open, expecting the familiar map of England. Instead, a flurry of newspaper clippings surprised ARJ as they fluttered to the floor.
Sighing, he twisted on the desk chair and bent forward, retrieving a long, discolored clipping from under the toe of his right boot.
ARJ returned it to the open book, picking it up again as his eyes landed on the name, Dibbens. The chair creaked as he leaned back, bringing the article closer.
Wichita, Thursday, June 18, 1874
The District Court
His eyes searched for the name that had caught his attention a minute before.
“Second paragraph,” he said quietly, his thumb quivering as it marked his place in the words.
On Friday, the case of the State vs A. Dibbens, was taken up.
A cold wave washed over ARJ as his eyes skimmed the rest of the article. Familiar names from his boyhood struck his memory with such a force as to drop him, unexpectedly, back into 1874.