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 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.”