THE BASICS
Name: Annie Caulder
Nickname: That Caulder Bitch

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Gender: Female
Age: 37
Hair: Auburn
Eyes: Green
Distinguishing Marks: Large scar across her stomach and belly.

General Appearance:

Annie, despite flirting with middle age, is still a handsome woman, albeit a weather-beaten one given her harsh lifestyle and her predilection toward living on the ranges.  Her form, tall, and over-muscled for the tastes of "decent" menfolk, is still one that catches the eye, especially among the rougher crowds.  The crowds she hangs out with in saloons as she plays poker or dice games.

Her clothing is practical, well-maintained, but obviously carefully patched.  She can't afford constantly buying new brown leather pants, a new plain, beige linen shirt, new riding boots, or a new brown leather duster.  The only items she spends money on regularly are her hat and her gun belts.  Twice each year, needed or not, she buys a new, black "boss-o-the-plains" with a fancy hat band, often made with silver, leaving her with a sizable collection of them at home, and once a year she gets new gun belts made to fit her waist and hip structure better than normal gun belts do.

HISTORY
Occupation: Retired bounty hunter, now horse rancher.
Personality: Dour and guarded with those she doesn't know.  With those she knows she is usually open and often surprisingly vulnerable.
Sexual Preferences: Heterosexual.

About Your character:

Annie's tale is told in dime books all over the east.  Her name was changed (to Hannie), but the story is largely correct.  In brief she, as Anne Henstridge once had a happy life, married to her childhood love Arthur Caulder, living with her husband in the house off the successful horse station he ran.  Life was as idyllic as frontier life can get until…

Well the dime stories called the Clemens brothers "inept".  (It was the same license they took when calling her "Hannie".)  The truth is they were lethally effective as a gang.  They didn't accidentally kill Arthur, then decide from there to first have their way with Annie, in sequence, before slashing her across the stomach and burning the house down to hide the evidence.  It was done with brutal calculation and it was just fortune (hers good, theirs bad) that had Thomas Price, a famed bounty hunter, hear her screams of fear and rescue her.

The way the dime stories told it, out of the goodness of his heart Thomas Price nurtured her, healed her, taught her his trade of gunfighting for bounties, all without ever laying a finger on her.  They worked as a team for a few months as she picked up the trade, before the Clemens brothers ambushed and killed him, sparking a days-long rampage of revenge killing that left "Hannie" putting a bullet between the eyes of the eldest Clemens brother, realizing too late that in getting her revenge she'd changed her life forever and could never be whole again.

The stories are mostly right.  Well, except for the part where she and Price were lovers.  Passionate ones.  She did learn, however, his trade, and did work with him as a bounty hunter before they split up (amicably) and she worked alone.  Hearing of his death at the hands of the Clemens brothers, however, did spark her to go after their bounties in memory of her lover.  The first two fell rapidly: one in a shootout in a brothel, the other in the open street.  The final one fled like a coward, however, and Annie spent several days hunting him down.  As in the stories she hunted him down in the ruins of an old cavalry fort, but unlike the stories she faced him down, having the drop on him … and then shot him in the shoulder.  For the first time in her short career as a bounty hunter she took one in alive.

She kept her soul.

In the denouement of reality, not the dime story, she gave up the life, but she kept the guns.  She kept the money (she didn't have the vices men in the trade usually had: no whiskey or whores, though gambling is something she does).  She heard about an opportunity to own land near a town with the strange name of Sweetwater and, as a "monied widow" bought the land and hired wranglers to start raising … horses.  In a strange way, it turns out, of honouring her dead husband.

Her life since moving to Sweetwater has not been without controversy.  An unmarried woman owning land is dubious.  Living with unmarried ranch hands (though she's not the only woman at the ranch) is scandalous.  Her proclivity toward dealing with threats to her land or her people via extreme violence is unheard of.  But still she ranches, raising horses that the fairer-minded admit are good, well-tended ones.  And woe betide those who try to interfere.

THE ARTHUR CAULDER RANCH

Yes, she's named her ranch after her long-dead husband.  This is partially maudlin remembrance, but mostly practicality.  Strangers passing by the homestead will see the sign and be less prone to thinking that a "defenceless widow" lives there to be taken advantage of.  The locals, of course, know the truth and simply call it the Caulder Ranch.



The ranch is surprisingly large and well-outfitted for one that's so new.  It's also as immaculate as a house in the baking Nevada sun and dust can be.  Annie has thrown herself into her new life as she threw herself into her life as a bounty hunter: whole-hearted with no looking back.  She had a lot of money saved from her years of hunting bounties and it was all put into the land, the buildings, and the salaries.  This led to early success and, while she is by no means wealthy, she is also by no means desperate either.

The horses branded with Annie's stylized "AC" mark are all riding horses for those who work in the range.  They are not working horses for pulling ploughs, nor are they dressage horses.  She is careful with her horses, ensuring they're properly fed and cared for.  She does not sell them broken in for riding, usually, though she can negotiate breaking them in for an extra fee.