The Golden Rule- A Western Romance

Tax Day

Every other Thursday was tax day.

3 percent of whatever you earned.

Uncle George had done it every time for almost the past 4 years.

He’d been due back on Saturday.

Sunday came, and I remained patient under Martha’s pleadings.

I suppressed the urge to go to town till Tuesday, Martha close in tow.

Wednesday came with the same fruitless results, a sense of hopelessness prevailing over the giddy and ignorant hope that writhed around inside of me.

And Thursday came.

Martha straightened my collar from behind. I tugged at it, the lace scratching my neck.

She fussed over her gloves, fanning herself absentmindedly with her hat.

I breathed, my eyes jumping to the bell- tower as it chimed a dozen tolls, the hands overlapping. A fresh wave of sweat broke my skin.

Martha moved beside me, in an attempt to see my face.

She simply quirked an eyebrow.

She was only a few years older than I, but the sun had carved wrinkles in her flesh from the years she spent under its unyielding glare, and the earth had calloused her hands, reaved her fingernails. She had come westward with us when I was only thirteen, freed and fled from my grandparents’ plantation in Tennessee.

The next person walked into the bank. We were second to next now.

“Relax. You’ve got an hour,” Martha grabbed my arm.

My throat was as dry as the dust-whipped street, “I want it over with.”

It was not the act so much that bothered me, just the circumstances that put me in the position to handle such obligations.

“There is nothin’ dangerous to it, only inconvenient. At least it’s an excuse to be in town,” she fanned my face with her hat, the motion simply dispersing the sweltering air.

“I’ll leave town after this,” I looked across the street, raucous laughter filtering from the porch of the saloon.

The marshal’s spurs cracked against the rail as he howled.

I turned away, a frown souring my features.

Four years. For four years, Jacob and his band of men had owned this town. It began with a duel, that escalated into what was a catastrophic war in consideration to the scope to Elixir. It was only a few months after the Sioux got mom and pa, and Uncle George and Aunt Addison stayed as far out of it as possible.

Eventually, the marshall rode into town, praised and coddled till most people realized that his solution was to let Jacob extort us to an overlookable extent.

Without bloodshed.

And there wasn’t- if you missed so many payments, there wasn’t even a drop of blood that would ever be found of you.

Jacob’d become a sort of superstition, and considering I’d never seen him, a ghost-tale as well. No one spoke about him except for children, spreading wild stories.

They said he could glare at a man and drop him dead, that or he shot so fast you couldn’t testify otherwise. They said he killed a hundred Union soldiers single-handedly in the war with nothing but a Calvary sword. They said he drunk a shot of rattlesnake poison and molten lead with his breakfast every morning.

I scoffed. Out here you didn’t earn a dangerous reputation over nothing, but he was a snake nonetheless. Not that I’d ever say anything about it.