The two young men stood thirty feet apart, facing each other in the early morning on a sandbar in the Mississippi River at St. Louis. Both men had removed their coats and vests. Another man asked if they were ready. They were. Now came the command: “Fire.” Two shots broke the morning stillness. One man fell to the sand, but honor was not satisfied, and what happened next haunted till death the man who was still standing.

AOWM – August 12