I
Lover’s Retreat, or Lovers’ Retreat, as some would have it, is in Palo
Pinto County, four miles west of the town of Palo Pinto. I got the
first version, in which Lover makes his escape, from my father, Dr. J.
T. Spratt. He heard it from a man named W. H. Walker, who related it in
an address delivered while he was state secretary of the I. O. O. F.
Walker said that the escape was made in the neighborhood of 1870 and
that he was lying out on the prairie near by on the night that Lover
eluded the Indians.
The other version I remember from a paper read in an English class in
the Palo Pinto High School. I do not remember who wrote it, but I
remember that we had a discussion over the place at the time, and that
when I gave my version as to how Lover’s Retreat had got its name, none
of the class had ever heard it, though most of them had heard the tale
of the Indian lovers.