A/N: I'm wrapping her up. There's a lot more I wanted said, but I believe I've reached the end of my attention span. If you've liked it, gimme a holler. I intend to write a couple other ficlets involving Candy and Anna as a couple, and maybe tying up the loose ends left here. Thanks for tagging along.

ALSO I believe I'm going to merge the first fic with this one, so it'll disappear and reappear here shortly. Love y'all.

Chapter 3: Wouldn't Cost Them Much

One of the wagon horses was found cropping at the grass in the yard. Anna was gone The ranch house, the barn, the bunkhouse, were tore to pieces by cowboys and Cartwrights. She was gone for two days. Before the strike of noon on the third day Candy had ridden two horses into a lather. He was marching to the livery for a fresh one when an old man crossed his path.

The man had a weather-beaten face, and his left eye was cloudy and weeping. The other was green, or looked green, staring beseechingly out from under a skunk-streaked shock of dark hair. His hands, when he raised them, were broad and flat and scarred-

"You're Alex Gipson."

The old man looked astonished. In his hand was a battered photograph and he looked uncertainly down at it and back up at Candy. The cowboy grabbed his collar and made to shake him when Gipson cried out.

"I am- How do you-? Please, have you… Have you seen my daughter? Please, I'm trying to find my daughter-"

Candy released him with a growl, but before he could bark Gipson thrust the photograph in his face. Father and daughter stared out at him, the girl's face pretty and unmarred and far younger than the woman who'd disappeared overnight.

"She's missing," Candy admitted. A flash of blue came striding up, and he thrust the old man toward the trooper. "She was taken by someone last night. Corporal, take this man to the sheriff and me to your captain. The girl is gone."

Alex Gipson was mumbling incoherently as the silent corporal led him away. They found Roy talking to one of the Ponderosa hands, and the sheriff gestured vaguely to the cells before fixing Candy with a hard look.

"Moory found the trail."

Candy looked from sheriff to cowhand and back.

"The trail. Where Miss Gipson was taken," Tommy Moorehead clarified.

"I'll fetch a fresh horse-" Candy was already at the door.

"Candy, we don't know what we're riding into," Roy tried to warn.

"We will when we ride into it," the man called over his shoulder. "Come on, Tommy."

The hand led him to a place where the broad hoofprints of the draft mare circled in the road, overlain by bootprints that must have belonged to a man the size of Hoss. Candy leapt from the saddle before they drew to a stop and made slow careful steps around the scene as he studied it. The man's prints approached the horse. Scuffled. One leg planted and the other dragging- he was bearing a weight on his left leg and to either side of the drag were divots where a heel might have kicked up.

"He just grabbed her off the horse," Candy muttered, casting about on the road. "Why did she stop? Why didn't she…"

"Maybe he frightened her," Tommy supplied.

"She could have just galloped away," the foreman argued. "She would have just ridden away."

"You don't just run away from Roger Dunn."

Candy felt something prickle in his skin. He tried not to react, but there was no hiding the way his shoulders stiffened and his face fell to stone. He heard Tommy shift in the saddle.

"Why'd you do it, Moory?" Candy didn't even twitch. There was a rock within reach, but the younger man thumbed the hammer of his rifle as though reading his mind. "A fancy new rifle?"

"Shut up and start walking, Candy."

His eyes were moving. He'd be shot before he reached the horse. He was a quick draw, but he'd seen Tommy snap the head off a jackrabbit at a dead run.

"You've been a hand on the Ponderosa nearly a year now," Candy took careful steps into the trees at the man's gesture. He threw a cockeyed glare at Tommy's mounted figure. "We arranged your sister's wedding last summer, Tommy! You're gonna turn traitor on us?"

Tommy snorted. "Candy, I should'a shot you for introducing my sister to Pete Waller." He seemed to sigh, urging Candy forward with a wave and clicking his tongue at his mount. "It's nothing personal. I've known Lonnie Meyers and his boys a long, long time."

"You haven't been alive a long, long time."

They laughed together like there wasn't a gun on Candy's back. There was no real humor in it. The pair twisted down a deer trail for several hundred yards before Candy heard the knicker of horses. There were seven men spread out around a low-slung tent. Roger Dunn and Lonnie Meyers watched him walk in, and between them was a raw-boned man with the same phantom's eyes as the boss. A man he didn't recognize patted him down from behind. He'd made it almost to Candy's hips when Tommy called out a warning.

"He keeps a knife tucked on the inside of his britches, and another in his boot."

"Thanks Tommy. Carry on now."

Candy huffed, watching the cowpoke tip his hat to Meyers and rein his horse back toward the road. An eighth man slid out from the tent flaps, buckling on his gunbelt with a satisfied grin. Candy's blood ran cold. A pair of hands tightened on his hips, then snatched his arms around to keep him from lunging in the direction of the eighth man.

"No."

"Now don't make any foolish moves son," Lonnie pleaded.

"Let me see her."

"You don't wanna do that," goaded another, grinning.

There was at least two pistols trained on him, but the men holding them were more interested in watching Candy struggle. So he did. He stomped on the toes of the man holding him, scrabbled to sweep him off balance, grunting, demanding to see what they'd done to the little girl just barely twenty. Roger Dunn stepped up in front of him. He was a mountain of flesh and beard, and he was grinning.

"Don't do it, Dunn," warned the younger Meyers.

"Leon…" Dunn chuckled. "I'm only gonna give him what he's asking for."

"No, you're not."

Dunn turned to stare down his boss's son. Candy had no way of knowing how long they'd worked together, but he could see a dark history between them. Lonnie broke their standoff.

"Listen to Junior now, son. There's no reason for quarrel. Now you boys get ready to move out.

"

It took three of the men to wrestle Candy to where Lonnie wanted him tied. Only three men were left to guard the camp.

Roy Coffee, Captain Harlow, and a small detachment of troopers met the Cartwrights on the trail where Candy's borrowed mount had been found. Alex Gipson had been brought with them. They weren't talking long when Tommy Moorehead crashed out of the trees at a hard lope.

"Mr Cartwright! Sheriff!" They dragged him off the horse and held his shaking shoulders. "Ya- ya gotta come!"

"Boy, what's wrong?"

"What's the matter Tommy?"

"They got Candy," Tommy gasped. "They got Candy, and-and the girl. They're taking 'em to the ranch. They're gonna burn the house down!"

Tommy Moorehead wished he could smile at his work. Without a second wasted the cavalry, the lawman, and the ranchers were thundering to the Ponderosa. He fell in behind them, counting the minutes by the steps of the horses. He'd met the gang in the trees, given them half an hour's lead. They'd be ready. They'd be waiting.

Candy stared dumbly at the canvas tentback. The three guards were quiet. They had no fire, but sat shoulder to shoulder in the chill and split cold bread and beans and whiskey between them. One among them was the eighth man, the one who'd slithered out of that tent like a rattlesnake sporting a great fat possum grin. The foreman fought a poison anger and tried to test the strength of the ropes binding him.

A small hand snaked under the tent, and another. They were bound at the wrist, and a rusty smear marked where she'd struggled too hard to free them. Anna's head followed. She was gagged, like him, with the shape of a man's open hand bruised into her neck and a bloom of color over the whole left side of her face. She wiggled, worming under the tent until she could reach out and touch Candy's boot. Here she rested, her forehead flat on the cold earth. Candy flexed his foot. She squeezed weakly.

The girl was nude. Candy felt some gratitude she'd stayed low and belly-down, and tried not to follow the trail of pale and abused skin down her back and thighs to her bare ankles still half buried in canvas. She rested only a few moments before lifting her head to look the man dead in the eye. She was hurt, and tired, and miserable, but the green eyes that found him were blazing with a tenacity he'd never seen in her.

I'm still here, she seemed to say. This isn't over yet.

She squirmed backward with some difficulty, back under the tent so they wouldn't be found. Some time later Candy heard a man rise and cough. He heard the canvas rustle, and he heard what followed, and he felt blood drip into the palms of his hands from where he fought the bindings on his wrists.

"They're not here, Pa."

Blood ran thick and heavy in the yard. The fight to retake the house was heard across the county. Three men were placed as snipers- one in the hay loft, two others in the upstairs windows. Roger Dunn and Leon Meyers had kicked out Ben's front windows and the fire spewing from them had killed three cavaliers in an instant.

Tommy put a bullet straight through the back of Captain Harlow's head. He paid for his treachery with a poorly placed shot to the gut and was suffering still in the yard.

"Where is she?" Alex's hands were trembling. He'd taken a shot to the thigh and looked very pale. "Where is she? Where's my girl?"

"She's dead, Alex." Leon Meyers and his father were still alive.

"I shouldn't have given her up," Gipson was muttering. "I-I shouldn't have given her up…"

"You owed us a damn lot of money, Gip-"

"Shut up this damn minute, boy," Hoss thrust a rifle butt hard in Leon's chest. "Tell us where you've hid them out."

"Yeah," Joe growled, "and you might end up making it to your own trial."

"There are seven bodies out there in the grass, Cartwright," Lonnie responded in his son's place. "I'm sure the buzzards wouldn't mind just two more."

The Cartwright home was shot to pieces. There was shattered glass covering the floor, and smears of blood to be scrubbed from the floors, and Hop Sing was sweeping in with a broom to clean around the center of conflict.

"I ordered the girl dead after the last of the boys had their fun with her," Leon told them.

"You didn't," Gipson cried. He shook both fists at Lonnie. "You told me she'd be safe! You told me you'd take care of her!"

"I did," Lonnie said. "The whole time, not one of my boys was allowed to touch her. She trimmed and shoed the horses, cleaned the guns, cooked our meals, and cleaned our clothes." He nodded to Ben. "It's their doin'."

"We saved her after your boys beat her nearly to death- she lost her baby!"

"There was a baby?"

"You stole what was rightfully mine, jeopardizing our outfit- and not to mention decimated our party altogether. Someone has to bear the brunt of that. She needed to be punished. And so did you."

Ben touched Joe's arm before he could launch himself at the old outlaw. "Look how it worked out for you, Lonnie. You lost more of your men. You're going to be taken in and tried for a score of different crimes. You're going to hang."

"We all get caught, Cartwright. Won't change the fact that your intervention killed that little girl." Lonnie smiled a bit. "Be sure to remind your ranch hand of that when you find him. But I think he'll know that pretty well."

They couldn't get him to speak further. Leon followed the path of his father's silence. The two surviving cavaliers had dressed their wounds and Gipson's. The senior of the pair, a corporal, help his kepi in his hands as he approached Ben.

"Mr. Cartwright if you'll allow us the use of your buckboard, we'll escort the sheriff and the bodies of the deceased into town. We can return with a detail to take the Meyers men into custody, and assist you in finding your foreman."

"That would be excellent, Corporal," Ben sighed. "Hoss, help them with the horses please."

"Near about time," Candy heard.

It was near to sunset. There hadn't been a fire, or a bit of noise from the three guards all afternoon. Someone entered the tent. There was milling about the camp but hardly any sound from the canvas for several long minutes. A horse knickered. There was the faint sound of gear being packed and loaded.

Anna wiggled out from under the tent, naked as the day she was born and her hands shining bright red. She stayed low to the ground, and slid behind Candy's tree. He felt the ropes loosen. He felt her fingers on his wrists, sawing at their binds.

"Dammit Bill, what's taken you so…" A gun cocked. His hands were free. She dropped a knife in his open palm and retreated as one of the men came reeling out of the tent and barreled for Candy's position. "Jim! Girl's escaped!"

The man made to raise his pistol. His throat opened up in a red torrent. The last man wasn't far behind, and blistered the side of the tree with a wide shot. Candy was pinned down, unarmed.

"Where'd she go?" Candy didn't answer. "Where the fuck she go, cowboy?"

She was edging up with a discarded carbine. A single shot ripped through his chest in a spray of blood and bone fragments. The dusk fell quiet again.

"Anna?" She was trembling. "It's over. Drop the gun. Where are your clothes?"

He shouldn't have touched her, but she looked so cold. He put his hands on her arms. She looked like a wild thing. He could see the bruises so much clearer.

"What'd they do with your clothes," he repeated.

"They burned them all last night."

"All of them?" Her skin was cold as stone. He stumbled over to the nearest body and stripped it of its buffalo hide. When she was more modestly covered he caught her in a hug. "God, Anna, I'm sorry."

He left her standing in the broad clearing and searched the bodies of the men. None of the weapons left behind were his, but he took the cleanest of the pistols and a carbine for himself and fetched the knife from a corpse's throat. He approached the tent with some wariness and peeked inside. It was the eighth man. The one he'd been hoping to kill himself. His throat was split wide open. There was nothing else but a soiled blanket.

They were riding double. She leaned against his chest and may have cried, but Candy couldn't see her face well enough to tell. He asked if she needed a rest. If she wanted to stop. Wait for morning. Talk. She kicked the mule into a trot without a word. Candy wrapped an arm around her and gave a gentle squeeze.

"Candy!"

Hop Sing and Joe were keeping a tired watch over the prisoners when Candy and Anna rode in a quarter after midnight. Joe caught his friend in a hug, slapping him lightly on the chest.

"You made it! Half of Virginia City is gonna be looking for you tomorrow."

"I hope they don't wear themselves out too bad," Candy was eyeing Lonnie darkly.

"Cavalry is coming back for them in morning," Hop Sing called on his way to the kitchen. He came back with two cups of coffee that were weak but hot. "I get clothes for Miss Anna."

Joe glanced Anna's way and his attention immediately snapped his attention back to Candy. There was meaning in his look. There was something else altogether in the one Candy shot back.

"Sweet Anna, what happened to the boys I left with you?"

"Shut your damn mouth, Lonnie!" Candy took two short steps toward the prisoners before Joe caught his arm. "Joe, why aren't these bastards dead in the yard?"

"The cavalry wants justice, Candy." The words came out of his mouth smoothly, but there was a sneer playing on Joe's face. "Pa's orders, not mine. I promise."

"Pity I always thought you liked Mitchell," Lonnie was tittering behind them.

She wore a look that said something along the lines of I always thought you'd like to burn in hell, but said nothing and only stared hollowly at the old man. Hop Sing caught her arm and nudged her gently toward the staircase and to her room. They caught Alex Gipson on the way up.

"Daddy?"

The man didn't dare to look at her. There were tears plain in his voice. "I didn't know what I'd done. When I paid that debt." He reached his hands out to her but didn't touch her. "I'm sorry."

He limped down the stairs. Candy and Joe let him pass through the door. Whether he stole a horse or disappeared on foot, they never saw him again.

Candy and Joe continued to speak in hushed tones for another hour or so. The Meyers pair mouthed off once too much and Candy gagged them both. He kept glancing up the darkened staircase- until Joe touched him lightly and gave him a meaningful look.

"Joe, I can't."

"Candy, you love her."

He thought about her screaming in the snow. He thought about her naked and beaten and afraid but still fighting. He thought about her jacking the lever of a cavalry carbine and blowing a man's heart out through his chest.

"I don't love her," Candy argued. When he closed his eyes he saw hollow green eyes. "I can't see her like that, Joe."

"I think you need to." Candy wouldn't look at him. "I think she needs you."

In the end Candy lost out. He climbed the stairwell with no small amount of trepidation. He was invited in after one muted knock, and was engulfed completely in a snotty, sobbing hug.

"Hush. Hush now. You'll wake everyone." She quieted, but held him tighter. "I came to check on you."

It didn't need saying. Candy walked her over to the edge of the bed and sat cradling her there. He lost track of the time he spent stroking her hair.

"Stay with me." Her voice cracked.

"Anna I can't."

"Stay."

"Not like this Anna, no. Not with you… like this… and in another man's house? Ben trusts me to do the right thing."

He didn't need to see her to feel her eyes on him. He didn't need to ask to sense her fear.

"I don't want to be alone."

In the end the right thing to do was lay beside her. Dawn wouldn't be long in coming. The outlaws would be tried and hanged. He could lay here, a little while. Hoss or Joe could wake him early to give him a seamless getaway.

One night wouldn't cost them much.