AN: And now... some progress... with the plot...

Comeuppance

The next morning, the ranchers led SG-1 to a group of saddled up horses. They were sturdy well trained animals, most of them Morgans, one stood a solid sixteen hands high if not a bit more. Jack handed Teal'c the reins for the horse that looked more suited to pulling carts than being a range pony. The gelding was clearly a draft mix of some kind. "I shall handle the overseeing of the main herd, O'Neill." Teal'c told Jack when he looked at the horse.

Jack nodded. "Carter and I will bring up the rear; you and Daniel work your side. Try to keep him in the saddle."

"Indeed." Teal'c agreed, making Jack give him a quick smile.

"Carter!" Jack bellowed.

She'd already gotten on her horse and cantered forward.

"I have a name you know... Jack." she says to him sharply.

Jack sighs inwardly. So that's still an issue. Apparently their agreement extended only to him agreeing to keeping his hands to himself for now. That was going to need to change but he needed to bide his time for now… but only up to a point. "Why yes, Samantha… you do." He drawled at her making her blush almost immediately at his tone. Good, he thought, let her spend her day overthinking my tone.

They worked together to bring up the rear rounding up any strays. Lunch was jerky and hardtack in the saddle while they kept moving through a meadow slowly so the cows could graze. The first night they slept in the open, the second day, it was early afternoon when the Rancher and his lead hand signaled everyone to hold up. They had come to a farmstead the rancher was friendly with and were stopping for the night. Jack figured they weren't quite to Castle Rock but it was pretty close. He was a bit saddle sore if he was going to be honest. Food and a warm bed were in order for the night. If Sam joined him in either, he'd consider it a win. They hadn't bickered more while they worked but that was expected. More than once they had a donnybrook in his office then shown up in the Gate room as though nothing had happened.

Jack jumped tiredly down from his horse and looked around for the outhouse figuring the farmers who owned the land wouldn't appreciate him watering the petunias. He didn't notice the hole in his pants pocket or the packet of chewing gum that fell out into the grass in his rush to find the head.

Moments later, the farmer's kids found the pack of gum. Gretchen who was at most seven picked it up with wide eyes and pulled a piece out. She could just read enough to know it said 'chewing gum' on the package. She'd heard of chewing gum but never had any. Jack came out of the outhouse and saw the little girl in her gingham dress looking at the gum with fascination. "Try it." He said with a wink. He could get more in town after all if they had a little money.

She gave him a gap toothed grin and ran off to her siblings to show them her bounty.

Several moments later , Jack was watching them happily giggle and blow bubbles with the gum when Sam marched up to him. Her expression was furious.

"Sir… what on earth are you thinking? You know the ramifications of introducing new things before they are available. Bubblegum wasn't invented until the thirties. What if what you did was change history?" She demands.

Jack lowers his head and pulls his hat down, trying not to laugh.

"This isn't funny, Jack!"

"Sam…" He says slowly in a low tone.

"And don't start that again." She points at the kids. "You can't just fiddle around with history just because we're stuck here." She scolds him.

Jack's hand has settled on his belt buckle. Willing himself not to react to her physically because very few things turned him on more than Sam on the warpath. "They're having a good time, Carter. Relax."

"Relax?!" She asks him in a low incredulous tone.

"Carter… chewing gum was invented in the eighteen sixties. They can get it in town. Just not the brand I had which won't mean anything to them anyway."

Sam's eyes went wide and she's about to ream him again when it registers what he said. "You're sure?"

"Yah… it came up in one of my great grandpap's books. It took a while to make its way from the East coast to California but chewing gum was a thing." He told her.

He smirked just a little at her flummoxed expression. "Let's go grab some grub."

"Grub?"

"Oh yah. Iffin yer gonna participate in the locality… yah got tah speak the lingo." He drawled.

Sam bit her lip and giggled. Jack smiled. Much as he adored her anger there was no place private to finish where that kind of conversation was going to end up going with them. They rejoined the ranch hands for an evening meal, Jack's hand companionably around her waist. On the ridge above the farm, a lone horseman in a bowler hat watched for a short time then headed on towards Denver.

Daniel sat down next to Jack and Sam at one of the long tables in the bunkhouse normally reserved for the migrant workers. Teal'c was feeding the horses. "This is kind of interesting, don't you think?" He asked Jack.

"Can it, Danny. We're stuck here." Jack grumbled as he poked at his portion of stew.

"Yes… but we could be a reliable historical resource for this era." Daniel said excitedly.

"First we need jobs." Jack groused.

"Well," Daniel waves his hand. "We found this one."

A pair of giggling women approached them. "You see Lucille. I told you it's him here in the flesh." Her companion nods. "Mr. Legend, are yah undercover? Yah shaved off yer handsome mustache. I dare say though without it yer even more handsome"

Jack looks up slowly in confusion. Daniel and Sam shrug at each other.

"Oh and this must be the lovely Miss Steele. I must say you're quite a bit taller than Mr. Legend describes in his books." She gushes.

Sam looks at the girl with a 'who me?' expression. "I'm not-"

But Jack waves her off. He gives the girls a self deprecating grin. "Ladies… Nicodemus Legend is a character in popular novels. He's no more real than the tooth fairy… and while he's a very dashing fellow, I am also not the author, Ernest Pratt, who writes him."

"Well, sir, we'da swore you were him."

"There's a passing resemblance that's all." Jack says dismissively to the girls.

Sam looks at him thoughtfully.

"Jack…" Daniel says, "How do you know who they are talking about?"

Jack grins. "I met him a long time ago when I was a little boy."

"Well, that's simply not possible, sir. Mr. Legend is younger than you."

Jack takes a bite of his food and doesn't comment.

"I think you're having a bit of fun at us, Mr. Legend." The redhead that goes by Lucille says to Jack.

"Nope." Jack says and goes back to eating.

The girls leave and Sam looks at him suspiciously but doesn't say anything. Teal'c eventually joins them for his portion of the meal and an hour later they are settling down in the bunks they are afforded.

"I bet he's going to take the cost of renting the bunk house for the night out of our pay." Jack grumbles.

"Who" Daniel asks.

"The Rancher." Jack tells him and flops on his back to go to sleep.

Sam doesn't say anything. The conversation in the hall was tickling in the back of her head. Why had Jack been mistaken for a local author? She was missing something and it was going to bother her until she remembered or figured it out.

The morning after next, they woke early and went on their way to Sheridan. The cows weren't happy with the early start every morning but the Rancher wanted to get them to a bigger market before their market value dropped as he'd hustled them a bit as he headed northward. He'd already ran them up from Texas and sold off the scraggly ones to down-on-their-luck farmers peppering the dusty road from Austin to the Denver area. He had about half his original herd. He hoped to unload the rest this next stop or close to it. He knew the hands he'd hired in Manitou were temporary help. They just wanted means to get where they were going, wherever that was. That was all right with him. Hands came and went and the four of them had been competent. He'd give them a good recommendation for their next jobs.

"You folks go to the Ranch manager and he'll pay yah the money I owe yah. He's got letters of recommendation for yah too. Yah been good hands." The rancher whose name was Mort told them. Daniel thanked the man profusely. "Yah know… I've got some extra horses if yah want to buy the ones you rode up on." He says squinting into the lowering sun.

"We'll… uh… we'll think about it. Thanks."

"Take yah time, son. I'll be in town a couple days."

Daniel nods.

They walk over to the manager and collect their pay. "Got extra for the two of yahs." He says pointing to Jack and Sam. "We didn't lose any dogies this run. Yah work well together."

Jack and Sam grinned at each other.

"Any place around here we could get a hot bath and a night's sleep?" Daniel asks him.

"Silver King ain't bad. Bit pricey if you ask me for a town with only four hundred fifty souls living there, long term."

Daniel nods and opens his mouth to say something when Jack cuts in. "More importantly… where's the bar?" He grumbles. At the man's blank look, he huffs. "The saloon?"

"Oh! Buffalo Head is up yonder at the end of the road 'bout three buildings down from the hotel."

"Convenient." Jack says. He then evades Sam's elbow into his side.

Teal'c shepherds everyone back onto the main street. "We have twenty of your dollars in total. This amount seems insufficient to remain in town without employment for long."

Jack sighs. "I think a room was about…." His eyes go vague… "What did he tell me…? Hm… A couple bucks a month for room and board."

"A month? Are you sure, sir?" Sam asks.

"Around that. It's a pretty small town. He kind of described it a little bigger." Jack says thoughtfully as they walk down the street slightly off to the side...

Sam gives him a sharp look and is about to ask him what he means when a shot rings out and hits a water barrel. "I done told you I'd shoot you, fancy." The grubby man from Manitou Springs tells Daniel as he squares off and starts to take aim again but Daniel pulls his Colt Dragoon he'd picked up trading with the prospectors and hits the other man center mass before he could bring his gun back up again. Jack's years of training had paid off but so had Daniel's familiarity with antique firearms.

Sam rushed forward and checked his pulse but it was too late. She shook her head and her eyebrows drew together at Jack's inquiring look.

"I… Jack, it was instinct I swear."

"You exhibited the correct reaction, Daniel Jackson. Had you not fired upon this man… you would be dead." He walks over to where Daniel's hat had landed. He hands it to Daniel and there's a bullet hole in the brim. Daniel swallows as he fingers the hole. He'd heard the other round fire but...

The sheriff stomped over from his spot on the porch of the jail up the dusty main road. A gangly young man with dark wild hair ran up. "I saw it, Sheriff! It was self defense. Sneed fired on him unprovoked."

"Thank yah, Skeeter. I saw it happen too." The sheriff told the kid. "You folks all right? He looks to the four of them.

Daniel nodded slowly, still fingering the hole in his hat.

"Ima need ya'll ta come on up to the sheriff's house ifin yah don't mind. You too, Skeeter. Then yah can go get the coroner to take Sneed off to the town dump for all I care."

"Yes sir, Sheriff Motes!" Skeeter said enthusiastically. "You folks should follow me please. Seeing as yer new to town. Anyone tell you that you look an awful lot like-" He started to say to Jack.

"Ah!" Jack exclaimed holding up a finger. "He's just a character in a book." He told the kid. Daniel and Sam looked at him confused.

Skeeter looks at Jack oddly. "You family, mister? Yah sure sound like Mr. Pratt."

"I'm not surprised." Jack grumbles and heads for the Sheriff's office.

"Do you know what's going on?" Daniel asks Sam.

Sam shrugs. "There's something but I can't remember."

"Yah and he's being unusually cagy even for him." Daniel grumbled. "Hey Sam… look at this." He pulled a piece of paper tacked to a corner of a building. "Isn't this?"

They both turn and look at the man laying in the dirt then each other. Then they both look at Jack's retreating back which is being shadowed by Teal'c's hulkier form. Sam and Daniel hustled to catch Jack. The reward for his capture had been a thousand dollars dead or alive. "Sam, this is about sixteen thousand dollars in our money."

"That doesn't seem like very much." Sam says.

"Well, no, but it's considerably more than we have right now." He reminded her insistently.

Sam grabbed the flier and hurried up to Jack. "Jack…" She said and pushed it at him.

He took it and reads it quickly after adjusting it a bit for his farsightedness. Impulsively Jack pulls her in by the waist and kisses her. "This will buy us some time." He says gleefully. "Sheriff Motes." Jack says. "Any chance of collecting the reward?"

The sheriff shook his head. "If you ain't his relation, I'm an injun." He grumbled under his breath.

Jack frowned at the slur but didn't say anything. They needed the money first.

"O'Neill, what does-?"

But Jack stopped Teal'c. "Don't even say it. I hate that word. He meant the local natives." Jack said in a low angry tone.

Teal'c nodded and Sam put her and gently on his arm. Jack's grandmother on his dad's side had been part Sioux. He gave them each a grateful look and Sam left her hand on his arm.

"A'yauh, there's a reward. You'll be needing to go down to bank to collect it. Good folks at Silver King boarding house fronted it on account of him robbing the place blind a few years back and not being caught since. Reckon if yah need a room they might put y'all up for the night just for handling this little bit of business. I'll be needing you and yer wife's name and yer friends too."

"Uh… we aren't…" Sam started but Jack shook his head. She looked at him oddly. He shook his head again.

"Miss Carter is my betrothed." Jack says with a smile and starts writing their names in the logbook the sheriff hands him.

Sam gives him the side eye while he collects the bounty verification note from the other man and finds herself hustled out before she can say anything. "What was that about?" She demands.

"Just roll with it Sam. That guy was giving you looks I didn't appreciate." Jack growls in her ear.

"What?" She asks him, stopping in confusion.

He rounds on her. "We made an agreement but I'm going to make something clear. You know how I feel about you. I know how you feel about me. If you figure out how to get us home… great. Normally I have every faith in your abilities but there is no Gate, Sam. They aren't going to find it for another fifty years and by then I'll be dead and you'll be a little old lady. And I'd give going to California in five years a shot but I'm pretty sure Daniel is right that it's just a movie plot. I want you to keep trying because it's who you are. But I need to plan for a future where we're stuck here. Because that's who I am."

Sam looks up at him wide eyed. "Jack…"

"I want the future I have here to include you by my side, Sam." He tells her softly as his hands cup her face. "I don't want to imagine any future anywhere without you in it."

Sam looked up at Jack, drowning in his eyes.

Daniel and Teal'c stood back a bit, recognizing this was a moment neither should interrupt.

"Sam… let me have this one thing." Jack pleaded.

She gave him a shy smile that worked its way into a full beaming grin. "All right." She says just as softly.

Jack grins back, turns, and puts out his elbow. "Let's go collect Danny's reward." He says cheerfully.