“I bought them.”
“I asked where, not how.”
“I might get some one else mixed up in this if I were to answer that question. I can’t do it.”
“No,” said the colonel, “you can’t. When you buy whisky, nowadays, you are usually compounding a felony. It’s certainly a rotten condition to obtain in the land of the free; but you’ve got to protect your accomplices. I shall not ask you again; but they’ll ask you in court, my boy.”
“All the good it’ll do them!”
“I suppose so; but I’d hate to see my boy sent to the penitentiary.”
“You’d hate to be in court and hear him divulge the name of a man who had trusted him sufficiently to sell him whisky.”
“I’d rather see you go to the penitentiary!” the colonel said.
That night, at dinner, Custer made light of the charge against him, yet at the same time he prepared them for what might happen, for the proceedings before the commissioner had impressed him with the gravity of his case, as had also the talk he had had with his attorney afterward.
“No matter what happens,” he said to them all, “I shall know that you know I am not guilty.”