Several Questions (spoilers!)

I've owned this film for 25 years and thought I knew it pretty well, but there are still unanswered questions I have that I guess we have to leave up to suspension of disbelief or creative license:

How does Harry meet the kids and claim himself "their new uncle" and form his bond with Jasper, and yet we never see him with the kids till the escape from the orphanage? Harry whispers to Jasper through the locked door when he and Jake sneak into the orphanage to alert the kids that they're breaking them out. It makes you think he's had the opportunity to establish a relationship with the kids already, but we never see the kids with Harry till this scene.

When Harry sees Jezebel walk into the bar (she tips all the glasses at an angle before confronting Sheriff Jensen), he says to himself, "Boy, is she aggressive." How would he know, as he's never seen her before? He sees her LATER when he rides the mule up the mountain, but that comes later. In the bar, it's the first time he's seeing her. Why is she considered aggressive to him?

The cops found Lorna's car at La Brea and Rodeo (Los Angeles) but when she's talking to Mary Lou on the phone about where she'd like Mary Lou's brother to leave his truck for her to pick up, she refers to "your grandparents' old place in the smokeys in the next county." Did she fly from LA to another state (Carolinas, KY, TN, GA), or are we supposed to assume her home was in the same state as the log cabin she drives to?

Is there any connection to Mary Lou's grandparents and the kids' deceased mother? They reference that she died, and Jake has an old birthday card from her, but does that mean the kids and their mother lived in that cabin while she was alive? I assumed the kids found the cabin after she died and they escaped from the orphanage the first time.