“Hit’s a pity you can’t hold him out o’ the blackberry vines,” he said. “If this keeps on, I won’t have a stitch o’ breeches against we reach Hardin Town. These here briers are raveling them out, string at a time.”

At the creek’s fork we turned into Hardin Town, hitching the horse-mule to a locust post before the courthouse. Uncle Jolly saw us coming and shouted out to us, his face tight between the window bars. Logg Turner opened the jailhouse door. We went into a stone-damp hall, Logg fumbling through his long keys for one to Uncle Jolly’s cell.

“I could nigh open it with my eyeteeth before you picked the key,” Uncle Jolly said, twisting his mouth like Logg’s.

We went into the cell, the door catching itself back on rusty hinges. Uncle Jolly grabbed me by the arms, swinging me around twice, scraping my heels on the walls. “Big enough in here to swing a fox by its tail,” he said. He dropped me atop a quilt-ball on his cot and shook Uncle Toll’s hand until the knuckles cracked.

“Hain’t no use breaking a feller’s arm off,” Uncle Toll said.

Logg rattled his keys and grinned at us. Jolly winked at him, making a sly pass at the keys and tipping them with his fingers. Logg jerked the iron ring back, quickly though not uneasily, knowing Uncle Jolly’s ways.

“Fotch some chairs for us to set on,” Uncle Jolly said. “Hain’t you got no manners a-tall?”

Logg showed his stumpy teeth. “Fotch ’em yourself,” he said. “They’s a bench setting just outside the cell.” He went up the hall, leaving the door open, and Uncle Jolly dragged the whittled seat in.

“Logg’s mighty feisty, for election time to be so nigh,” Uncle Jolly said.

“It’s a tall risk not locking that door,” Uncle Toll said.

“I hain’t going nowheres,” Uncle Jolly laughed. “Next rusty I cut, it’s the pen two years for shore.”

“Ma sent me to say what you’ve spoke,” Uncle Toll said. “She never reckoned you’d have sense to know.”

“This is my pigeon roost,” Uncle Jolly said. “I nest right natural in jail, and it’s a fact. I get lonesome sometimes, though, nigh enough to start figuring a way out. Reckon I can’t trust myself to stay locked in long. Nobody here but me now. The sheriff turned everybody loose to pull corn. They won’t be finishing their spells till after gathering.”

“You just got nine days more,” Uncle Toll counted. “Looks to me you could nail yourself here till then, but I wouldn’t trust you spitting distance. Two breaks you’ve made out o’ this jail times past.”

“If I had me somebody to talk to,” Uncle Jolly said, “I’d fare well.”

“Logg ought to be a heap o’ company.”

“Ruther hear a bull frog croaking.”