IV
The third version of the legend was given me by Miss Etta Maddrey, a student at the University of Texas in the summer of 1922, who in turn heard it from an Austin woman who worked at the Driskill Hotel. This woman claimed that the witness in the circumstances that follow was one of her ancestors.
A pioneer couple had built a log hut near what is now the road to Deep Eddy. It was near a spring in some woods, and sometimes Indians camped near by. In the band was the tribal chief, and he had a daughter. He had, too, a hardened and cunning warrior who was in love with the daughter, and the chief was pleased at the match. The daughter was not pleased, and soon the brave came to realize that he was being repelled.
One evening when the settler’s wife was going to the spring for water, she saw in the dusk a tender greeting between the Indian maid and a young white man of the settlement. She saw too the form of a slinking Indian warrior spying on the lovers. The next evening the meeting was repeated, and the man and the young woman sat on a rock and watched the sunset. They parted; the paleface disappeared; the girl turned to go back to [[176]]her camp and was confronted by the giant and menacing form of her spurned suitor. With vivid gesture he pictured the wrath of the father and chief when he should learn that his daughter had scorned one of his tribe for a hated paleface, and he gloated as he told how he would report her treachery.
The girl broke away from her tormentor. Perhaps she thought to return to her father and ask forgiveness; but the folly of such a course must have been apparent to her. Perhaps she thought of taking refuge with her lover, but then his helplessness in protecting her must have flooded her mind with the conviction that by such an act she would only bring about his death. A moment after she left the warrior she bounded out of the woods in a direction to the north. On and on she ran until she reached the topmost point of what is now Mount Bonnell. Below her was the dark river. “There was but a moment’s hesitation, and then the fatal leap—lover’s leap then, certainly; and Lover’s Leap today.” [[177]]
[1] Morphis, J. M., History of Texas, New York, 1874, pp. 510–513. [↑]