AN: This chapter gets into some rough territory. The KKK are the bad guys. If it was up to Jack I think he'd just kill them all.

A Turn for the Worse

The barn wasn't roofed but it gave them shelter from the cool evening mountain winds so they set up their tent inside its walls. The only change Sam and Jack had made from their previous arrangement of the tent was zipping their sleeping bags together to make a two person bag.

It fascinated Daniel that two people with as much sexual tension as they had running between them that they could regularly sleep that way and do nothing further than occasionally fondle each other discreetly the same way they did at work. He supposed it made sense. They had been handling things that way for years and it may have occurred to them to wait until they were actually married to consummate their feelings for each other. Or perhaps Sam just still felt she could somehow get them home. Either way he admired their misplaced fortitude.

It was getting close to dusk and Jack was coming out of the outhouse they dug behind the barn house when he spotted moment down the ridge. He narrowed his eyes. It wasn't Lone Eagle and his people. Didn't look like Ute either. If he didn't know better…

Jack went into the tent and dug through his pack for the binoculars he'd hung on to just in case. He grabbed his Zat too as long as he was going prepared. Daniel looked up from the pot hanging over their fire.

"Everything all right, Jack?" He'd found reading the other man's body language was more useful than expecting conversation when Jack went into business mode.

"Are the horses secured?" Jack asked him.

"Yah."

"Find Carter and Teal'c then meet me on the ridge. Stay down."

Daniel nodded and headed off to the valley where Sam had been collecting mesquite branches and looking for established berry bushes they could transplant onto their own land when the fall rains hit making the soil soft enough to dig. Teal'c was examining the surrounding land for animal tracks to see if they could benefit from some free game. Daniel found Teal'c first who assured him he'd collect Sam from the valley below them.

Daniel went up the ridge low until he got near the edge and dropped to his belly the rest of the way. "What's going on?"

"Trouble." Jack said simply and handed Daniel the binoculars.

Daniel adjusted them until they focused on the group of people below them in the trees. "Lone Eagle isn't going to like that." He said to Jack.

"Much as I don't agree with Ernie on stuff I wish he was here to help. I could really use one of Yonish's tasers." Jack said softly. "It's got a further range than a Zat."

Teal'c joined them next to Daniel. Sam came up on the other side of Jack. The people below them had dug a hole and lit a cross on fire but worse, they had a woman and little boy bound in front of them facing the fire. The people were unrecognizable as they all had on white Klan hoods.

"What is the meaning of their clothing?" Teal'c asked them.

"There're the Ku Klux Klan and their main purpose is to terrorize freed black people." Daniel growled. "They should have died out in the early 1870s though and not resurface until 1915 or so. Must have missed a cell."

"They decided if they can't own people they would kill 'em off and terrorize them instead." Jack snarled.

"It is dishonorable to murder a child and an unarmed woman." Teal'c rumbled.

"You got that right." Jack agreed, his eyes flint hard. "Daniel, go back and get the rifles. We might be able to scare them away."

Daniel nods and starts scooting backwards in the dust. When he returns, Jack hands one to Sam and leaves the other with Daniel.

"When I give the signal, shoot at their feet. Teal'c and I will try to knock out anyone who tries to make off with the woman and child." Jack told them.

The others nodded and Jack took aim then gave the signal. Sam and Daniel fired at the feet of the robed figures making them jump back. A pair of taller figures who were probably men tried to grab the woman but Jack fired on them, knocking them down but not out due to the distance. Several Klan members limped to their horses because Sam and Daniel weren't making any effort to miss intentionally.

The Klan members scattered but refused to give up their prizes just yet and Jack growled in frustration. "I'm going down there. Carter. Cover me." He ordered her.

Sam nodded and reloaded her shotgun.

Jack made his way around to a gully just north of their location and slid down it cursing softly as stones few up in his face. He was pretty sure the Klan members weren't armed or they would have shot back sooner. He ran forward, yelling at the top of his lungs, hoping startling them might work to his advantage and shot anything that was moving that wasn't the woman or the kid. They were still trussed up like turkeys and Jack was making steady progress towards them. Sam was pegging her share of white sheets herself and he noticed she wasn't being careful about where she aimed. Daniel was deliberately aiming for center mass.

"Captain Lance… there is a small issue with the 1881 situation."

"What is it, Gideon?"

"It seems a rogue cell of the KKK survived the eighteen seventies and is being slaughtered as we speak."

"I don't see any problem with that." Mick Rory said from across the room where he was eating a sandwich. "The only good bigot is a dead bigot."

Sara flapped her hand at him to be quiet.

"While Mr. Rory is both colorful and correct, this is a two pronged issue. The cell should no longer be active and yet the people dealing with the issue also do not belong in that time period."

"Time travelers, Gideon? Why would the bureau be playing with history like that though?"

"Because the team in question are members of a twentieth century military operation known as the Stargate program. Had they gone back in time in a 'puddle jumper' the drive design my own time jumping programming is based upon, it wouldn't show up on my algorithms. However the Stargate has had a second glitch that SG-1 will not be able to simply get lucky with another solar flare to get home a second time."

"Wait, this happened to them before?" Sara shook her head.

"Indeed it has, Captain Lance. Previously they were sent to 1969 however that created a self resolving time loop. However, in this case, the Stargate hasn't even been dug up in Giza yet and won't be for another fifty years their time."

"What's a Stargate?" Rory asked.

"The Stargate was a classified interplanetary wormhole generator capable of nearly instant space travel. It was decommissioned in twenty fifty when ship travel became more efficient and safer."

"How come we've never heard of it."

"The Stargate program was never fully declassified due to at least one last use was required in twenty sixty nine. After that, it was fully decommissioned except for emergency use. It still resides in Cheyenne Mountain to this day, assuming you go by my day which is twenty one sixty six."

"So they are in a loop that's in a loop?" Sara asks.

"Essentially yes." Gideon agrees.

"Woof." is all Sara says for a moment. "All right so they are supposed to be there but the KKK aren't and they are fixing the problem but they aren't the ones that are supposed to be fixing it?"

"Correct!" Gideon says gleefully.

"So who is supposed to be fixing this?"

"An Ernest Pratt, author of the Nicodemus Legend dime store novels and the great grandfather of the current leader of SG-1, the team trapped in the wrong time."

"This reads like something Rebecca Silver would write." Mick rumbled with amusement.

"Or in this case Ernest Pratt in his later novel 'The Legend of Cheyenne' which is about a gun slinging cowgirl, her union soldier beau, and her academic brother as well as her beau's loyal companion who he rescued from slavery. That last part is true; Teal'c was a Goa'uld slave until Colonel Johnathan James O'Neill freed him from slavery in 1997."

"So you're saying no one will notice if I recycle that plot…"

"Mick… shush!" Sara told him. "Wait… wait… so Ernest Pratt's great grandson is doing what Ernest is supposed to be doing. They got there using a wormhole generator and they use a time ship that our timeships are based on?"

"Oh there's more!" Gideon said with obvious glee."

"I can't wait." Sara says resigned.

"You will have to extract them without alarming them as all four of them are highly trained military specialists in spite of one being an archaeologist."

"An archaeologist?" Rory asks.

"Yes, Doctor Daniel Jackson."

"That kook who thought the pyramids were built by space aliens?!" Mick asked and started laughing. "Let me guess, he was right?"

"Indeed he was. SG-1 goes on to nearly single handedly defeat that alien race in interplanetary combat."

"So don't startle them. Got it." Sara agrees.

"I'm not quite done, Captain Lance."

"What else?" Sara's voice is resigned.

"They must be extracted after the wedding of Ernest Pratt but prior to Colonel Jack O'Neill consummating his relationship with Major Samantha Carter."

"Let me guess…"

"Which happens the night of his great grandfather's wedding."

"What happens if we don't?" Mick asks curiously as he takes another bite of his sandwich.

"I'm so glad you asked, Mr. Rory! If you just leave them there, their children wipe out several social injustices in the area and their great grandson goes on the first mission through the Stargate. Colonel O'Neill instead commits suicide over the death of his son by his first marriage and Samantha Carter is killed on the second mission by Apophis which creates an enormous time paradox."

"And if we get them home after they do the nasty, what then?" he asks, brushing crumbs absently off his chest.

"In that case, Colonel O'Neill retires from active duty to marry Major Carter who becomes pregnant the night of the wedding in 1881 which leads to her not being on a critical mission and subsequently the Goa'uld enslavement of Earth."

"Terrific." Sara mutters.

"More importantly, if Samantha Carter dies in 1998, she does not go on to decode the programming for Lantian puddle jumpers leading to the Time Bureau never being created in the first place."

"This just gets better and better. All right… round up the troops. Looks like we are headed for the Old West." Sara tells Gideon as she walks out of the bridge, muttering about not being paid enough for this kind of crap.

"Hey Gideon… What happens to them if we send them home?" Mick asks her after he makes sure Sara is out of ear shot.

"Well, since you asked nicely I shall tell you…"

Teal'c approached the terrified woman and crouched next to her. "Are you whole?" He asks her as he puts out a hand.

Behind him, Jack is hog tying KKK members who were Zated so they don't wake up and cause trouble.

"I… I... yes… Who are you people?"

"I am called Teal'c. These are my companions, Doctor Daniel Jackson, Doctor Samantha Carter, Colonel Jack O'Neill. We are here to rescue you."

Sam smiles in amusement. It's the most effort she'd seen Teal'c put into translating from his native tongue to English in a while. She holds one of the KKK members down while Jack swiftly ties him up as well. Daniel is unpacking more rope from one of the horses he'd retrieved.

"Allow us to take you back to town so you may make a statement against these men who attacked you." Teal'c told her.

"I… If I do that, they will kill me for shor!" The woman said and cringed back.

"We'll make sure they don't, ma'am." Jack tells her firmly. "Is the boy your son?" He asks her kindly.

"Nephew. His mother was killed by our former master when he was but a babe. Been raising him since." The man looked rough but he had kind eyes. "Name's Delilah, Delilah Jones. My Nephew's name is James."

Jack smiled kindly at her. "Funny. My great great grandma has your same name." He says.

"And his middle name is James." Daniel adds.

Jack looked thoughtful. His mom had told him he'd been given that name because he'd been an old family friend of her parents and grandparents. Well, why not? But he wondered if Ernest was supposed to save them and how that might affect things though he was certain he could talk the old man into mentoring the boy. He had a soft spot in his heart a mile wide he'd never admit to. Had said he'd always been uncomfortable around kids until he'd met James.

Speak of the devil, the Legend hot air balloon floated over the tree line and began to lower when they caught sight of the trussed KKK members and SG-1 congregating around the woman and her nephew.

"Ho there!" Yonish shouted down as Ernest lowered himself on the ladder.

"Great timing, Ernie! We did all the work and you'll probably get all the credit." Jack says with false anger at the other man.

"I thought you were laying low?" Yonish asked.

"He's kidding." Daniel said. "You are kidding?" he asked Jack over his shoulder.

Jack gave him a 'who knows' kind of shrug and went back to tying up hooded men.

"He's kidding." Daniel assured them.

"Well, who do we have here?" Ernest hopped off the rope ladder he'd climbed down and smiled brightly as he asked the woman shrinking against Teal'c.

"Ernest Pratt, this is Delilah Jones and her nephew, James Jones." Teal'c introduced them.

"Madam, I have always been fond of that name as you share it with my beauteous mother. Allow me to introduce my associates. That handsome devil running the balloon is named Huitzilopochtli Ramos but you may simply call him Ramos. My other companion is Doctor Yonish Bartok-"

"Legend? Nicodemus Legend?" Delilah said in astonishment.

"Well yes… on occasion... in a manner of speaking." Ernest agreed, slightly embarrassed.

"The masta's daughter used to read your books to us when the masta was away from the plantation. I think she'da freed us anyway once her daddy died." The woman said in awe of Ernest.

"Well here we go." Jack muttered and Sam elbowed him. "What?!" He yelped at her soto voco.

Sam kissed his cheek but said through gritted teeth at him so low no one but he could hear her "Behave yourself." She said through her clenched teeth.

Jack huffed out a sigh. He supposed she had a point. Just because he and Grandpap Ernie didn't see eye to eye on some things didn't mean he needed to be difficult about everything just for the sake of doing so.

"Ernest!" Yonish calls from the balloon. "If Jack and Samantha have this situation under control, perhaps we should take Miss Jones and her nephew to Sherriff Motes?"

"I will accompany you, Miss Jones. You will be safe." Teal'c tells the woman.

"But what if the Klan comes back? Won't your friends be in danger too?"

"Indeed not. My friends are formidable warriors and the Klan are cowards in white sheets terrorizing innocent people."

"Yah. What he said." Jack calls out to her from a member that Jack was kicking to try to wake him up. "Hey Ernie, make sure Samuel knows to bring a hay cart. There's quite a few of these losers to round up."

"Would you also like a sarsaparilla from the drug store while I'm out?" Ernie asks Jack sarcastically.

"You'd do that?" Jack asks him wide eyed and suddenly innocent.

Ernest laughs and shakes his head. "Not a chance. Well, come on, Teal'c, ma'am. The sooner we get to town the sooner these useless pieces of trash can sit in a jail cell.

"Indeed." Teal'c agrees with him. "I shall return, O'Neill."

"Yah yah. Don't dawdle." Jack calls back as he waves them off.

Ernie can be heard taking as they float away. "So young James… Do you like novels also?"

Jack laughs and shakes his head. "That kid's head is going to be full of crap by the time he's thirteen." He says in amusement.

"You knew him?"

"Nah. my mom did though. It's where I got my middle name from." He smiles. "James ended up being a really good friend of great Grandpap's. He missed him until the day he died." Jack said sadly. Sam put a hand on his arm. "Died of cancer before I was born." He looked thoughtfully as the balloon floated out of sight. "I'm kind of glad I finally got to meet him. It's weird being named after dead people."

"At least you didn't get your name because your dad wanted a boy." Sam quips.

Jack sweeps her up in his arms and plants a firm kiss on her lips before releasing her. "I'm glad he didn't get what he wanted." Jack says without preamble and goes back to trying to kick awake the KKK leader.

Sam stands there after, grinning ear to ear.