with sodden gray blanket and a wet and frantic
squirrel upon it. I worried for days over the fate of that squirrel.

They tell the story of a Chinaman floating down upon a log.

"Hello, John, where you go?" was shouted. John shook his head, sadly.

"Me no sabe! Maybe Saclimento--maybe San Flancisco. No got time talkee,
now."

* * * * *

"Look, the water is up to the top of the old stone pier," said one of
the others.

"Mammy Kate's 'ghost' would have a hard time haunting it now," I
laughed. "He'd be under twenty feet of water."

"What ghost?"

"Why, the tollkeeper's, of the old bridge. The one who hated the Indians
so."

"The Bear River tribe?"

"They were Diggers, but I think that nobody knew exactly which ones
were guilty. It was a fine bridge, the first suspension bridge in Placer
county."

"It was washed away in the floods during the winter of '61 and '62,
wasn't it?"

"Yes and they built the new one a mile up the river at Rattlesnake Bar,
where it still hangs."

"What about the tollkeeper?"

Here is the story--with a bit of a prologue.

* * * * *

Captain Ezekiel Merritt, one of the "Bear Flag" party in Sonoma, came
in '49 to try his luck at mining on the Middle Fork of the American. His
party came at last, through a deep canyon to a large bar on which they
found among unmistakable evidences of a plundered camp both white
man's and Indian's hair. A great ash heap containing calcined bones was
undoubtedly the funeral pyre of white men and red men alike, and some
yelling savages upon the upper bluff confirmed the tragedy which Captain
Merritt's party had been too late to avert.

They drove the Indians away and Captain Merritt cut into the bark of an
alder the name "Murderer's Bar," by which the place has been called ever
since.

The Merritt party stayed to work the bar. Before the summer passed the
river swarmed with men, some of whom joined forces to make up mining
companies. One of the rules of such a company: "Any shareholder getting
drunk during the time he should be on duty, shall pay into the common
treasury of the company a fine of one ounce of gold dust and shall
forfeit all dividends during such time." These fines, in some instances,
became so frequent as to cause a total disruption of the company.

The Indians returned to their villages in the hills. The foothill
Indians were not a particularly intelligent lot. They were Diggers, so
named on account of their habits of digging in