III
For the details of the second version of the legend as here summarized I am indebted to Mr. Billy Minter, a West Point cadet from Austin.
Once two tribes of Indians living far to the north were at deadly enmity with one another; one tribe lived in what is now Oklahoma, the other in what is now the Panhandle of Texas. One day the son of the chieftain of the southern tribe was walking in the woods. It was springtime, the time to be in the woods, and there he met the daughter of the chief of the northern tribe. It was springtime; their hatred was forgotten, and often thereafter they met under the trees. But one day a brave of the northern tribe discovered the lovers. He was afraid to fight with this strong young Indian of the south whose fame as a warrior was already far known; so he watched from the bushes and then slipped away to tell the maiden’s father what he had seen.
When the lovers were parting, they discovered the trail of the watcher. They realized that they could never meet thus again and that if the maid returned to her people she would be terribly tortured. They fled to the south, hoping to find refuge in some friendly tribe that knew nothing of the quarrels of their ancestors. The next morning the father of the maiden sent to the enemy’s camp a demand for his daughter. Then the elopement was revealed. A truce was made and forthwith fifty picked trailers and warriors from each tribe were sent to pursue and capture the fugitives.
For many days the lovers fled, followed closer and closer by the warriors. At length they found themselves hemmed in on top of a mountain that faced precipitously on the Colorado River. Out of the scrub cedars and from over the gullies, they saw the [[175]]cordon of pitiless pursuers nearing; beneath them they saw the swollen waters of the Colorado whirling over the rocks. On the one hand, was a captivity worse than death; on the other, the river below. “With one last prayer to the Great Spirit, the lovers embraced and, still locked in this embrace, leaped into the hungry water.”
“This,” concludes Mr. Minter, “is the legend of the Lovers’ Leap as told to me when I was eleven years old by an old settler, himself the son of a pioneer. He lived near the place, and told me the story while I was camped on Mount Bonnell. Last week (July, 1922) I went again to try to find him and have him retell the story, but I found that he had been dead for two years, and so I have not been able to use the names of the lovers, of the chiefs, and of the tribes, as well as many other minute circumstances that he made the tale vivid with. The river does not touch the foot of the cliff at the Lovers’ Leap. Indeed, it is a good stone’s throw from it to the water’s edge. The old man explained this discrepancy by saying that the legend was ages old and that at the time of the leap the river did touch the bottom of the cliff when it was on a big rise.”