Page:Hugh Pendexter--Kings of the Missouri.djvu/69

 to rest in the shade of the huge cottonwood which had stood there a sturdy tree long before St. Charles, Petite Côte, began life as the first settlement on the Missouri, or two years before St. Louis had its beginning.

Bridger was thirteen years old and supporting himself and his sister with his ferry-boat when Thomas H. Benton, "Old Bullion," and Charles Lucas fought two duels on the island, Lucas being killed. Six years later Joshua Barton, a brother of the first United States Senator from Missouri, was killed by Thomas Rector under the cottonwood. And could he have read the future for the period of but four months he would have known that Major Thomas Biddle, paymaster of the United States Army, and Congressman Spencer Pettis were to kill each other, the range being but five feet.

As he was recalling the historic encounters, and many others of lesser notoriety, he was disturbed by the dipping of paddles and the appearance of a long dugout making for the island. His spell vanished and he would have left the levee had he not observed that the canoe was filled with men. The hour, the number of men in the twenty-five footer, told him that only one errand