Huddled close to each other in the remotest part of the cave, the lovers waited. Though they were themselves in pitchy darkness, they could see the world outside; however, dusk was approaching. Then they saw one of the bucks raise his body into the edge of the cave. He paused, fixed himself, and reached down to give a hand to a companion. Just then the lovers heard a wild shouting. They recognized the voice of their Medicine Man. He was screaming to the braves to come away from the cave, and telling them that all caves with their openings in or just above water were inhabited by evil spirits. The braves left the cave with frenzied strokes and soon the silence told that all the Indians had deserted the region of the lake. Again the lovers breathed freely.
But they would not leave their refuge until they were sure of safety. All that night, all the next day, and all the next night, they remained in hiding. Then they left in search of a friendly tribe to take up with, and the story generally goes that they found hospitality and security.
The white man has changed the looks about the picturesque region where the couple wandered and hid; but the cave and lake where they evaded their pursuers bears in memory of them the name of Lovers’ Retreat.
LOVER’S LEAP IN KIMBLE COUNTY
By Flora Eckert
[This legend, like others of its kind, is on all sides asserted to have come down from the earliest pioneers. When, less than a century ago, settlers first moved into any part of Texas where there is a cliff, what was their initial act: to get a meal, to start out hunting for buried treasure, or to christen the cliff with a tale of lovers? At any rate, thirty years ago, in 1894, Mary J. Jaques, an English lady who had resided for a time on a ranch in the Llano country, saw in London the fresh pages of her book, Texan Ranch Life; and in that book on page 255 is a version of the legend of Lover’s Leap in Kimble County:
“The lover of Leona, a beautiful Indian girl, having been sent on a distant raid, she promised to light a beacon fire on the cliff each night of his absence. But alas! weeks grew to months, but he didn’t return, and the old chief, her father, ordered her to marry ‘another.’ [[164]]In despair one night Leona threw herself down the precipice, ever after known as ‘Lover’s Leap.’ The gorge below is still haunted by her restless spirit.”
Slightly different in detail is a version that was given to me in the summer of 1923 by Miss Grenade Farmer of Junction City, in Kimble County, a form of the legend from the same source having been written out by Miss Velma Crank. Miss Farmer’s father was a pioneer settler on the upper Llano and he has often told this legend to her, Miss Farmer says.
About seventy years ago there was an Indian village at the base of the bluff now called Lover’s Leap. The chief had a brave and handsome son; he fell in love with a maiden of his tribe “who was beautiful and good but who was not his equal in rank or fortune.” The father forbade the marriage desired by the lovers. In the obedient way of Indian youth, the son obeyed his father, but he continued to meet his love in secret, always under the bluff. In some way the unchanging nature of that great pile of rocks seemed to have an influence on the souls of the lovers. They, like it, would be unchanging in their devotion. So, when one day the youth received an order from his father that he must marry in order to perpetuate the noble line, he resolved with his sweetheart to preserve their fidelity by death.