"
"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.
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