The Widow Maker
Adam reached up and stroked her hair, pushing aside the dark strands that had fallen free from their confines. She was so lovely, so lush and full of life and her rounded body entranced him with its pink and white hues; she was like a rose that was waiting to be explored by the penetrating bee, soon to be overcome by the dizzying perfume of the bloom's attraction.
He had been looking forward to seeing her for days and the ride back from Abilene where he and Hoss had delivered the cattle seemed to take forever. There had been the dry, dusty ride there and the rain on the way home that had run off their hats, trailing down their necks and into their shirts but the wind was so cutting that none of them stayed dry under their ponchos. And then Hoss complained that the rain only made the dust and dirt cake on him when the sun came out and it became dry mud. But now Adam was home from the cattle drive and when she opened her door to him, Adam felt he was home and his urgent need for her overwhelmed him.
"Did you miss me?" he asked after they had "tussled" on the sheets. He looked up into her face, her gentle face that always softened when she saw him, a slight smile playing about her lips. He needed to hear that he was important to her.
"Every day and every night I missed you. I yearned for you? Did you miss me?"
"Oh, yes, I missed you. I couldn't get home to you fast enough." He traced her cheek and jaw with a forefinger.
"Get home to me? Do you consider me home?"
"Yes. You give me ease." Adam adored her and the fact that she allowed him to come to her, that she took him into her bed gave him a peace he had never known in his younger years and thought he would never find. But the past three years with her had been wonderful; he had a woman he loved and who loved him in return and gave him her body and because of that, his earlier desires to travel to far-off places, to sail the seas, to search for adventure, had faded into nothingness. She fulfilled all his needs and desires and he found rest in her as well as a new world to explore.
Adam wasn't a young lover anymore who lay with any woman whenever he had the itch—he had become more discriminating as he aged and she was so young, at least fifteen years younger than he and had only known one other man—her husband. But their hunger for each other was more deeply felt, more urgent and the expression of it more intense mainly due to what they gave to each other and what they shared with one another.
"Tomorrow's your birthday, isn't it?" she asked quietly, leaning over him as she propped herself on one elbow beside him, her finger tracing a circle around his nipples and then running down to and then around his navel. His body hair used to be jet black, she noted, but now there were gray hairs mingled in them. She had noticed that over the past few years, how he had changed and how he had come to love her more—and she, to love him. Adam meant all to her.
"Yes."
"How old will you be now? Forty?"
"Yes. I will officially be an old man with a misery in my back. Pretty soon, woman, you'll have to do the work. You'll have to climb on top of me all the time."
She giggled and leaned down to kiss him. Then she ran a fingertip over a scar on his shoulder. His body was covered in scars, some large, some small. "How did you get that one?'
"Oh, that. Jealous husband—shot me as I scampered out of his wife's bedroom window."
"Well then you should have been shot in the ass." Adam chuckled at her choice of word. "And this one?" She touched a light scar on his side.
"Oh, that's from a woman I left standing at the altar. Her daddy fired the shotgun that he had been holding on me."
"Liar."
He chuckled. "Yes, I guess I am. The only woman who's ever hurt me is you. But you haven't left a scar on my body—just my heart."
"Me? How have I hurt you?"
"You keep refusing me."
"I told you why long ago. You said then that you understood. After Sam was killed—well, I just thought that it was best that I stay unmarried. And I still do, especially since you're the one who killed him. People might think…well, you know what they would think."
"I don't care what they think." But Adam did care what people thought for her sake only; his own father had even questioned him when, after Adam had shot down her husband in a poker game, he spent more evenings away from the Ponderosa going to see the young, lovely widow.
The gunfight was fair—Clavell, who was drunk, drinking heavily along with his losses, had accused Adam of cheating and had called him out, tipping his chair over and standing back from the table where Adam still sat. Adam refused. He said that he wasn't going to get in a gunfight with a drunk. And then Clavell pulled his gun and fired above Adam's head. Clavell told Adam to stand up and draw or he would shoot Adam where he sat. And as the witnesses said, "He left Adam no choice; Cartwright had to shoot him."
But people discussed why Adam had to shoot him dead. And then Clavell's widow came up as the motivation. People seemed to remember how much Adam Cartwright would tip his hat to her and even give a small bow whenever he saw her and Asia Clavell would blush like a young bride and become flustered. Yes, they looked at each other with a yearning and it made everyone else in their presence uncomfortable. And then Adam's horse had been seen at odd hours tied outside Widow Clavell's small farm a short way out of Virginia City and the town gossips speculated that Clavell's wife was the true reason for the gunfight and why Adam killed him; those Cartwrights always acquired what they wanted—no matter how long it took or what they had to do to achieve it. And when the men saw Mrs. Clavell, they wondered if they would kill a man in order to bed her and many joked that they would, deciding that Adam Cartwright could very well have murdered Sam Clavell since he seemed to have seamlessly slid into the woman's sheets soon afterwards. And they wondered if Widow Clavell even noticed the change in men-but it wasn't quite a joke—underneath the humor, the men were deadly serious.
And Ben had heard the initial gossip and had also been informed by Sheriff Coffee that people were still, almost a year later, asking him why an inquest hadn't been called. Roy Coffee always said that there had been no need; he had enough witnesses and they all agreed it was self-defense and that was that. But people then talked about Roy Coffee being such good friends with the Cartwrights and that he would gladly turn his head and avoid seeing the obvious. So after he had heard talk again in town, Ben asked Adam, "Are you seeing Mrs. Clavell?" It was a cold night with brisk winds and Ben knew that the draw had to be powerful for Adam to saddle up his horse and ride out on night like this night.
"Why do you ask me that?"
"Because people are talking—she is young and quite beautiful. Are you seeing her?"
"Yes." Adam turned to face his father, daring him to say anything.
"You do what you want, Adam. I'm your father and so I care about your reputation—not the Cartwright reputation but yours—your own as a man. It seems anymore that you just sleep here and eat here and I know you have a life away from the Ponderosa and I accept that. Nevertheless, I would tell this to any man I considered my friend and, Adam, I consider you not just my son but my friend as well and I think you should know how I feel. I don't think it's a good idea. It's only been a year since you…since her husband was killed and if she's 'entertaining' you, letting you stay with her all night, well, it's not prudent. This is really a small town even with Virginia City having grown so much over the years. People still know other people's business and they gossip. And they've begun to gossip about you and her. It seems that your horse was seen tied out in front of her house until the early hours."
"You're right; it's not prudent. I'll have to leave my horse in her barn from now on." And Adam put on his hat and left and Ben never broached the subject again but he knew that Adam was in love. He just didn't understand the relationship between Adam and the young widow. But Ben did understand the allure of sex with a beautiful woman and it made him sigh with remembered passions of his own and memories of what it was like to hold a woman's lithe body and bury one's head between full, plumps breasts and then, oh, and then to grasp a woman's hips and to lose one's self in that feeling that was akin to religious ecstasy. Ben knew so well what that was like and in a small way, envied Adam. But after Adam returned from seeing the widow, he was always serene for a while, that is until his blood heated up again and there would come a tightness about his jaw and he became bitter and his family avoided him. That meant that he needed the woman. And Adam would leave and be gone the rest of the evening and night, returning at sunrise- until the next time came.