Charlotte Castle

Charlotte "Lotte" Castle is the owner of the Rocking C Ranch , though she’s getting a bit up in years, so she splits the running of day to day affairs with her most trusted employee, Sunny McClane. She’s a short, solidly built, suntanned woman with chin length black hair that has been to make people almost twice her size sit down and shut up. The daughter of a pair of Texan settlers from back when it was an independent republic, she spent her entire early life on a small horse farm, and proved to be a consummate tomboy even back before the manpower shortage of the Civil War started to cause such attitudes to become more acceptable. Eventually her father relented, and over time Lotte slowly but surely started to run more and more of the ranch, and by the time her father passed away nobody questioned Castle’s claim of leadership. After the Union finally won the war in 1871 and the laying of railroad tracks once again began in earnest Lotte cashed in her stallions and savings for beeves and moved to the New Mexico territory. Since Lotte didn’t particularly like trying to compete with the Cattle King of the Pecos and the several other established outfits she eventually drifted northward toward where Brimstone would be founded. Between the nasty business that went down in Lincoln County a few years back and the pleasant surprise of a tiny town popping up close to her ranch around the same time (with copper and now ghost rock following) the cattlewoman’s quite happy with her past self’s choice.   Ms. Castle is in her late forties and gives off the vibe of taking guff from nobody. Living on the frontier all your life and dealing with every rascal, varmint, and critter that goes bump in the night tends to give you sand like that. Still, she’s far from cold and emotionless, genuinely caring for the men and women working under her, and can reveal a somewhat wry sense of humor on rare occasions. Lotte never married, despite more than one suitor courting her, though on her more sentimental days she’ll muse her longtime hands are somewhat like her children. She doesn’t say that out loud, of course, and a good chunk of those folk likely say the same, though they wouldn’t say it outright either.