DOWN CASCADES way about seven or eight miles below Yosemite Valley there’s a big rock with a flat side on it. If you take a good look you’ll see the outlines of an old fireplace on it. That and a headboard in the cemetery in Yosemite Valley are about all that are left of George Ezra Boston, who used to be tollkeeper on the old Coulterville Road.

“Everybody liked Boston but somehow he got on the wrong side of Piute George, a renegade Indian who was runnin’ from the sheriff and holed up not far from Boston’s station. One evenin’ George was passin’ Boston’s place with a couple of friends, about suppertime. The tollkeeper, bein’ a generous gent invited the Indians in to eat with him. This they did and while Boston had his back turned, cleanin’ up the dishes, Piute George shot him. Another Indian cut his throat, just to make sure he was dead. Then they set fire to his cabin to hide what they had done.

“Ol’ Piute George really took to the rocks after that. A couple of the local folks finally coaxed him down by sendin’ up another Indian and gettin’ him drunk. They were staked out and waitin’ for him as he came slinkin’ along the trail and when he got close one of them let him have it in the backside with both barrels of a shotgun.

“Doesn’t seem possible that he lived through it but Mrs. Leidig and some of the Indian women nursed him back to health. I heard they cleaned out his wounds by runnin’ long feathers dipped in bear grease through them! He was tried for murder and sent to San Quentin for the rest of his life.”

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