Maddie Carver
A western woman played by Melissa in Coldstone.
Maddie started the campaign seeking out Theodore Lavine, rumored cattle and land baron around Coldstone.
She entered Coldstone with her ranch hands Felix Collins and John Spencer
Maddie Carver is originally from Massachusetts where her family owned a tavern, butcher shop and general store. She spend the first 15 years of her life as a spoiled rich girl. She attended the Jameson Academy for Girls and was taught reading, writing, arithmetic, music, and classical languages. She spend her free time playing the piano or playing outdoors with her older brother Henry riding horses and learning how to handle a gun. Her family was fairly well-to-do and was well respected in the community until sides had to be chosen during an anti-abolitionist riot in Boston. Their tavern was burned down, the general store was looted and the butcher shop was vandalized. After the family received death threats Maddie's father, John Carver decided to move the family across the country.
The family settled in Nebraska when Maddie was 16 years old. Along the way, her brother died of typhoid. The family scraped by working the land and living in a small, one room house. John Carver took every cent the family made off the land and lost it at the saloon. One night while at the saloon he found himself unable to pay up on a bet and a local gang, the Stanton Boys, were nice enough to cover his debt in exchange for a a never-ending list of favors including: a place to hideout, meals, transportation, alibis, etc. The Stanton Boys made a living by robbing stagecoaches, and fixing poker games. Maddie fell in love with Jacob Stanton and they married when she was 17 years old and she had a son, Larson, when she was 18 years old. During this time Jacob Stanton continued to make an un-honest living and roped Maddie into it. She would work undercover with the Boys and travel as a passenger on the stagecoaches they robbed, or work the players at the table when the Boys were trying to fix a poker game.
When Maddie was 19 and while she was pregnant Larson Stanton was shot and killed during a stagecoach robbery that went wrong. The Stanton Boys, moved on from Nebraska and Maddie soon followed suit leaving her two young children with her mother and father. She traveled Sioux City, South Dakota, where she worked as an "entertainer" at a saloon. A wealthy cattle rancher from Texas, James Darby, saw her performing one night and fell in love with her. He visited her on a regular basis until she was 21 years old and then he asked her to marry him. She left her saloon life behind, but before leaving she had become quite proficient at poker, could play a mean piano, and pickpockets of the men she "entertained".
She moves with to Virginia City, Montana with James Darby. They spend the next five years raising cattle and growing wealthy. Maddie has indifferent feelings toward James Darby, but she is beautiful and takes care of his needs so he does not care about her feelings towards him. One day, when Maddie is 26 years old, the well-known McCoy brothers show up at the ranch. Maddie finds them hiding out in an old out building at the edge of there land. She becomes infatuated with the younger brother, Charlie. The brothers stay for a couple weeks, during which time Maddie brings them food, water, necessary supplies, etc. The younger brother, continues to come back every couple weeks for several months. One stormy night she goes to check on them to make sure they are warm enough, her husband thinks she is in bed. The ranch hands have noticed that she goes to the abandoned out building quite frequently. When James Darby cannot find her, he asks a ranch hand if he has seen her and James it told to check the out building. When James Darby arrives he finds his wife in bed with the younger McCoy brother. He becomes enraged and the two men pull their guns and shoot each other in a fit of rage. Maddie is left standing naked spattered in the blood of two men who were madly in love with her. She cleans herself up and goes back to the main house. In the middle of the night she sends her maid to get some ranch hands to look for her husband. They of course find him dead, along with Charlie McCoy. The local law is called in and without any witnesses it is decided that the Charlie McCoy and James Darby must have had some deals between themselves and something went awry. No one is charged in the murders, Maddie inherits the Darby estate, which includes a cattle ranch outside of Virginia City, Montana, and another in Amarillo, Texas. Also a large share of a mercantile business in the East.
She proceeds to continue to run the business on her own. One day, when she is 28 years old, a few men from the East show up looking for her in town and come out to her estate to ask her questions about some wire transfers to the older McCoy brother, Logan, since Charlie's death, and about the death of her husband. She soon after wards decides to go further West to acquire more cattle and land, leaving the ranches in the hands of her trusty ranch hands. Before she leaves Virginia City, Montana, she makes a rather large withdrawal of money from the ranch back accounts.
