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Why and how did the gang start a ranch?

(So this got long as FUCK but please read it because oh my god i'm so so proud of it ok? Big thank you to @awesomeundertalelover3 for proofreading and editing this for me, especially since I'm incoherent when I type.) The choice to start the ranch and stop being a “gang” was the result of a few things. First, it was the botched job in Blackwater. Dutch killed innocent Heidi McCourt, planting the first seed of distrust within the gang. Then in the escape, they lost Sean and the gravely injured Mac, and John, Davey and Jenny were both injured. Then Jenny died, of course, followed by Davey. The next big push into the decision was the time spent in the mountains. The cold and the difficulty of survival made many members of the gang think long and hard about their life as gang members, especially now that Hosea and Dutch seem to be fighting over whether or not Dutches plans will work out.

At this point they are cold, they are tired, and they have lost what they assume is 4 members of their family. But they kept on. They gained Sadie Adler due to Micah’s stupidity and they gained Kieran. You all know how things go until they get to Horseshoe Valley. But this is where things start to change in my AU.

Horseshoe Valley is good for everyone, they continue to commit crimes as usual. But Hosea is contacted by the elder brother of his late wife Bessie. He wrote that he feared he would die soon, and his property would be sold to the government since he had no other family left in the area. His daughter lives in new york and she doesn’t want it. He’s going to go live with his daughter and get to know his grandchildren before he passes. But he doesn’t want the ranch he and Bessie grew up on in anyone else’s possession so he asks Hosea to do what Bessie would do. Who Bessie would give the farm to.

The deed was to 55 Acres of land in New Austin. A beautiful 3 story ranch house with all the facilities to keep cattle, chickens, pigs, sheep, and horses. The man had sold all his livestock so that he could make it to see his family and then give the money to his daughter as a gift for letting him live with her. Hosea never told anyone, he was going to keep the deed for a while and sell it when the gang was in need.

The Van Der Linde gang was being hunted and they all knew it. However, they tried to ignore it and tried to believe in Dutch. But with the unfortunate loss of so many members of their family at once was weighing on them. They were having trouble getting money and getting food, and they knew that gangs all over America were being wiped out around them. Arthur and Hosea would talk about how bad it was getting, and more than once members of the gang would tell Hosea that they just want to be loyal. They want to be safe again but they would never leave their family. The final straw was at the fault of Micah.

When Arthur went to retrieve Micah in Strawberry he ended up discussing the jailed outlaw with the sheriff. He was going to get the man drunk and then get Micah out Hosea style, but when he spoke to that drunk sheriff he learned a lot. The sheriff revealed that the Pinkertons had been by and spoke with him and that he was part of a famous gang. With further prompting, the sheriff dropped the bomb that Micah was a rat. The Pinkertons had come to Strawberry to take Micah away because they knew who he was but offered him a deal. They would let him wait here to be saved and then continue feeding Pinkertons information, or they could haul him off to Siska and hang him before the gang even noticed he was gone. And so Arthur thanked the wasted lawman for his time and left Strawberry without the rat.

When he got back and talked to Dutch and Hosea, he shared that Micah had told the law everything he knew and planned to come back as a rat. They knew very well that Micah knew far too much and finally Hosea knew what he was going to do with that land. With Dutch and Arthur there, he explained everything about his brother in law, and then he let them know *his* plan.

Hosea wanted the gang safe, even if that meant not being a gang anymore. He had been the shoulder to cry on for Lenny, who missed young Jenny. For Karen, who drunkenly admitted that she might be in love with Sean but never told him. For Tilly, who was terrified her old gang would find her again and she would be back where she was when she was 12. And for many others, who felt so broken by the last few months. His plan was to start collecting as much money as they can and use it to pay off their bounties and move to the ranch. To buy a few heads of cattle, take their chicken, buy some pigs and sheep, and start that ranch up again.

Dutch thought it was crazy. Arthur agreed, but the look of hope in the blonde’s eyes was enough to see what he really thought. Dutch was angry, he was so so angry that Hosea would suggest this after everything they had been through. He even threw it back in Hosea’s face that he had tried to live the regular life, that Hosea couldn’t do it. That insult was the last straw.

He told Dutch that if he didn’t do this, he was going to die alone on a hill made from the bodies of this gang. People were going to leave him behind because they all know that the age of gangs and crime is over. Or worse, they would be loyal to him and they would die for it. Dutch would be responsible for the deaths of everyone in this camp. And with Dutch still stunned by the older man’s outburst, Arthur spoke up. He thought they could do it, and he would follow Hosea if that’s what would secure the safety of his new family. That’s what finally drilled it into Dutch’s head that this is the only option. His orphan son, who he had rescued off the streets at fourteen, was willing to leave him behind for this new plan.

The first person they let into the new plan was surprisingly Strauss. While Hosea was sure they could figure it out, he needed to know just how realistic he was being here. He knew they would need to figure out what their collective bounties were and how they were going to pay that off. Strauss did a little math and a little research. Dutch himself had a $5000 bounty in New Austin. Hosea had around $2000 on his head, and everyone else (including Arthur) altogether was around $2000 max. They were lucky that many of the members were unidentified, meaning they were without bounties. Strauss told them they would need to get around $9000 dollars, and then another $500-$1000 to get the ranch started based on his estimations.

Getting the money would be hard if they kept the plan to themselves. The next people the three men told were Susan and John. They would need to start brainstorming ideas on how to get the money. Arthur was going to enlist the help of Javier and Charles to track down every treasure hidden across the map. John would start asking around towns for small jobs, legal ones. People who needed help building things, finding people, etc. Susan would have the girls get as much information as they could about possible leads with fake stories about their deadbeat husbands needing jobs to support their children or stories about wanting honest work for themselves to avoid becoming a prostitute. Everyone would have to pitch in, the only issue with this is that they couldn’t tell everyone yet, lest something go wrong and they can’t do it.

As they were collecting the money and saving, the gang was beginning to get suspicious. They were all working far harder and far more than usual for no apparent reason. Dutch was sending them to do legal work which was extremely odd, and the money they were earning was just sitting around waiting to be spent. Dutch knew he would have to tell them what was happening eventually, but he didn’t know how. He would have to tell the gang that they were no longer going to be a gang. That he was ending the life of crime they knew but expecting them to follow him into a new one.

When they found Sean again, alive, spirits were high. They had his welcome home party and everyone celebrated. But Dutch was the first to see the toll that months of time spent with the bounty hunters had done to the man. He had new scars that he was hiding from his family, he was missing a tooth that he definitely had when he left. He had been tortured for months, and no matter how well he hid it, Dutch knew it was time for his gang to be safe again.

Not long after the welcome party, many of the individual members knew. Charles learned from Arthur, Sean overheard a discussion between Hosea and Arthur and eventually told Karen, Susan learned from Dutch, etc. Soon Dutch was ready to tell the gang. And then Arthur ran into the Pinkertons when he was fishing with Jack and it really was the right time to say it. They moved to the new spot near Rhodes at Dutch’s insistence, if it were up to Hosea they would have up and left for the ranch instead but there were still a few things to be finalized. Once they were safe once more, Dutch made a speech. Arthur had let everyone know that Mac was dead, but hadn’t ratted them out and that Micah was dead too and he had been a rat, not long after he found out. And then he nudged Dutch forward to tell everyone what their new life could be.

Dutch told them the whole plan, told them that they would be safer and they would be happier, but they had to trust him. And if they couldn’t trust him, they could trust Hosea. The gang is loyal, many of them were saved by Dutch and even with their uncertainty, they chose to go with him to this new life. And so in the next 2 months or so, they had enough money to pay their bounties. The Pinkertons would have to leave them alone, provided they played by the law. So they all travelled to New Austin to live on a ranch, and become more of a family than a gang. Bill was there for a while, until one night he wasn’t. There was a note in his room claiming that they had all turned into a bunch of soft bellied do gooders and he was going to start his own gang. Nobody searched for him.

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