When Sister Salt excitedly told Mama and Grandma what she had heard, a Paiute man standing nearby smiled and nodded his head. In the presence of the Messiah and the Holy Mother, there was only one language spoken — the language of love — which all people understand, he said, because we are all the children of Mother Earth.
The sky went from dark to pale gray, then from milky to pale yellow as dawn approached. Indigo left the others and went to their lean-to as the dawn lit the sky in flaming reds, yellows, and golds. Away from the people and the campfires, the air was cold and damp though much of the snow had melted. Indigo pulled her white robe closer to her body. She was careful not to crush the squash flower; she wanted to keep it as long as she could.
At home, with the big quilt all around her to keep warm, she sat propped up, facing the east; orange-gold light from the rising sun shined between the lattices of willow and tamarisk branches. Inside the lean-to, everything the sun’s light touched turned warm and golden. Indigo took the big orange flower in both hands and held it to her face, with her eyes closed. She inhaled the old gardens after a rain when the edges of the dunes were crisscrossed in all the brightest greens — moss green and grass green and the green of the big pumpkin leaves.
As Indigo drifted off to sleep, she heard one voice and then another voice address the dancers. Wovoka led the dancers in the final rituals of the dance: they all must clap their hands and shake and wave their shawls vigorously to repel diseases and sickness, especially the influenza. They had just completed the final rituals when the alarm was shouted. The dancers remained calm because the Christ was with them and his Mother had already told them the soldiers would come.
The next thing Indigo knew, Sister Salt was shaking her, telling her to get up! Get up! She heard horses’ hooves, the sound of wagons clattering, excited voices and shouts. Indigo felt so tired, just sitting up gave her a sick feeling in her stomach; but Sister Salt jerked her to her feet. She was breathing hard as if she had been running.
“Hurry! Hurry! No! You can’t take those! We have to run!” Sister Salt pulled her along by the hand while Indigo tried to look back to see what was happening. She saw white men on horses and white men on foot seizing the Mormons, who put up no struggle; she saw dancers running in all directions with Indian policemen chasing them.
The girls ran south into the tamarisks and willows along the riverbank. The deep sand was tiring to run through, and when the sounds of the shouting grew faint, they stopped in the cover of the willows to catch their breath. Indigo knew the rules: when they were on the run, no one must speak even one word; but she wanted to know what had happened to Mama and Grandma Fleet. And the Messiah and his family — were they able to escape?
When Indigo was rested, Sister Salt stood up and pulled her to her feet. Off they went again, not running now but still walking fast; they no longer heard any shouts behind them. Sister Salt followed a game trail down the bank to the river’s edge, where the cattails hid them while they drank.
They no longer ran, but they walked steadily until the sun went down; then the cold air from the snow on the mountains drifted down to the river. In the side of a sandy bank above the river, they scooped away the sand with their hands to make a trench; then they wrapped themselves together with both shawls. They laughed at how they must look — two-headed, with four legs; they laughed at how awkwardly they moved wrapped together. They got down into the trench and arranged themselves comfortably before they began pulling sand into the trench over their legs for warmth.
Before dawn, when the air was coldest, Indigo woke Sister Salt with her shivering attempts to snuggle closer. They took turns rubbing each other’s hands and arms vigorously; Sister Salt pretended Indigo’s hands were a fire drill and stick that would catch fire if only she could rub them fast enough. “Faster-faster-faster,” they chanted in unison until they both started laughing out loud. They watched the light seep into the sky — at first a nearly imperceptible glow out of the darkness. Yesterday they all had been together dancing for the dawn that brought the Messiah, then suddenly everything changed.
Grandma Fleet and Mama would meet them back at the old gardens. That was the last thing Grandma Fleet told Sister Salt that morning, moments after someone shouted a warning; the girls knew how to follow the river south to the big wash that led to the canyon of the dunes.
The Messiah and his family escaped; Sister Salt saw them. His wife and children stepped into the river first, then the Holy Mother and he followed them; the fierce river currents of muddy water closed around them but they were not swept away. Their shoulders and heads remained above the muddy water, and they moved across the river effortlessly, as if they were smoke. When they emerged on the far side of the river, the Messiah and his family hurried up the high sandy hill above the river. The sunlight shone on the white robes of the Messiah and his family as they paused at the summit in plain view of the soldiers and Indian police overrunning their camp. But the soldiers and police never saw them; the Messiah and his family escaped.
♦ ♦ ♦
Sister Salt made a digging stick out of a piece of driftwood and dug up cattail roots to eat. Cattail roots didn’t really taste like anything but water with a little salt, but Indigo forced herself to chew and swallow them to stop the pain of her empty stomach. For three days they followed the river south; late on the fourth day Indigo noticed the air suddenly felt much warmer. On the morning of the fifth day, they reached the intersection of the big wash and the river.
They dug cattail roots all morning to carry along to the old gardens. They filled their canvas shawls with the roots and wore them bundled on their backs. Before they left the river, they gathered wild gourds to make small canteens, which they filled with water and strung around their waists with cloth torn from their skirts.
All day they walked through the sand and sagebrush; the air was cool but the sun warmed them. Indigo began to notice green shoots and sprouts of new growth pushing through the sand. A few miles west of the river, the big wash meandered southwest, and when they rounded a turn, Indigo shouted, “Look!” Along the sides of the wash silvery green brittlebushes were covered with yellow blossoms.
That night when they huddled together to sleep, the air was cold but it was not freezing. They had crossed into the land of summer. The next day, about noontime, Sister Salt pointed to a big sandstone boulder at an intersection with a smaller wash. Here they left the big wash and walked the small wash for a few hours more before Sister Salt took a game trail that ascended the crumbling clay bank. The trail was steep. When Indigo reached the top, she was short of breath and she had to wipe away the sweat before she could see where they were.
Indigo had been so young the last time they lived at the old gardens she didn’t remember how anything looked. She had listened to Mama’s and Grandma’s stories, and she knew they had been forced to abandon the old gardens after refugees came and ate everything. Despite the descriptions of the ravages of the starving people who left the dunes stripped bare, Indigo imagined the old gardens as they had been before the refugees came: tall corn plants swaying gracefully in the breeze, surrounded with bushes of bean pods and black-eyed peas, their golden-green tendrils tangled around the thick pumpkin vines.