He had dark wavy hair and one of them fancy moustaches that look like they’d been painted on your upper lip with a fountain pen. His sideburns come way down on his jaw.

They both had wise grins on their faces.

They fanned the air with their hats, and the gold-tooth one says, “Sorry we broke down your gate, but we was in a hurry to get here before you could drink any more of that well water. Wanted to warn you there’s been a lot of typhoid going around.”

“Well sir, is that a fact?” Uncle Sagamore says.

They looked at each other again like they was going to bust out laughing, in spite of the awful smell. “Sure is,” the moustache one says. “And you know, the shurf told us just this morning, he says you boys be sure to bring in a sample of water from Sagamore Noonan’s well so we can have it analyzed. Sure as hell wouldn’t want Sagamore to come down with that typhoid.”

While he was talking he eased around a little so he could see the jar sitting at Uncle Sagamore’s side. He watched it like he was thinking of some big joke he wanted to remember.

“Well sir, that’s real nice of the shurf,” Uncle Sagamore says. He looked at Pop. “It’s just like I was telling you, Sam. You take a lot of them goddam lard-gutted politicians settin’ around on their fat in the courthouse with both hands in the taxpayer’s pocket, they don’t do nothing to earn their money; but these shurf’s boys is different. Now you take them, they’re out protectin’ the poor taxpayer, the way they ort to be, lookin’ out for airplanes and forest fars and frettin’ about this here typhoid and watchin’ him through field glasses so he maybe don’t fall down and die of sunstroke while he’s out here workin’ from sunup to dark to pay his taxes and keep the trough full for ‘em. Makes a man downright proud to know they’re on the job like that. So you boys just go on out there and draw up a bucket of that water and I’ll see if I can find an old fruit jar or something you can put her in.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t want to put you out,” the gold-tooth one says, and grins. “We’ll just take that jarful you got settin’ there by your hip. That’ll be plenty for the grand jury—I mean, the health department—to analyze.”

“Oh, you mean this one?” Uncle Sagamore says. He brought the jar out. “Why, boys, this ain’t well water.”

“It’s not?” The two sheriff’s men were so astonished they looked at each other again. “Imagine that! It’s not well water.”

“Why, no,” Uncle Sagamore says, “this here is a kind of remedy I seen advertised in one of them magazines. “Do You Feel Old at Forty!” it says, and here was this picture of this purty girl without much on in the way of clothes, and it goes on to say how you can get yore pep back and start shinin’ up to the gals again if you been kind of losin’ it lately, so I figure I ort to try me a little of it.”

“Well, what do you know?” the gold-tooth one says. “And they sent it to you in a fruit jar, just like moon—I mean, well water?”

“Uh—not exactly,” Uncle Sagamore says. “You see, you kind of make her up yourself. They send you this powder, whatever it is, and you mix it right at home. There may be just a teensy smell of alcohol about it, but don’t let that fool you. It’s just because the only thing I had to dissolve it in was some old patent medicine of Bessie’s.”

“Well, imagine that!” the moustache one says. “A little smell of alcohol. Who would have suspected a thing like that?”

The gold-tooth one picked the jar up and held it under his nose. The other one looked at him.

“Can’t smell nothing with that stink out there,” he says. “But, hell, we know what it is.”

“I tell you it’s just a remedy, boys,” Uncle Sagamore says. “You wouldn’t want to take that in to the health department. They’d laugh at you.”

“Who do you think you’re kiddin’?” the gold-tooth one says.