Sister Salt listened to Indigo’s breathing; a great horned owl hoo-hooed to her mate from the cottonwood trees across the river. What a lovely evening for people and owls, she thought. Sand Lizard people weren’t afraid of horned owls the way some people were.
Sister Salt listened intently for a long time for any sounds that might come from the direction of Mrs. Van Wagnen’s house — didn’t Grandma Fleet mention that her Mormon friend had a dog? Mormons ate cooked food every night — Sister Salt tried to catch a whiff of wood smoke from Mrs. Van Wagnen’s stove, but the breeze smelled only of the river mud and the willow leaves.
The cold woke Indigo from her dream just as the sky to the east began to lighten; in the dream, she was at the train depot in Needles. She helped Sister Salt arrange the baskets for sale before the passengers got off the train that approached from the east.
Her breath made steam in the air in front of her so Indigo scooted down under the blanket and cuddled up to Sister Salt. It was too cold to get up without a campfire; she’d wait for the sun. The sky above the cottonwoods was pale yellow; the puffy clouds on the horizon were edged in red, pink, and gold. Although neither she nor Sister Salt had ever been to Mrs. Van Wagnen’s house, still Indigo imagined how it looked when Grandma Fleet described her visits there: surrounded by towering cottonwood trees that shaded and protected it from view, Indigo imagined; a big house like the ones she’d seen in Needles with flower gardens and rosebushes in the front yard, and corn, tomatoes, and squash in the backyard.
As they moved through the willow and cottonwood forest, the light of the sunrise was filtered through the flickering cottonwood leaves. Sister Salt listened: long-tail grackles chattered at two crows who scolded them from the next tree, a mourning dove called her mate to the river, and a fly buzzed near her hand. But she didn’t hear Mrs. Van Wagnen chop wood or the dog bark, and she signaled Indigo to continue but to move as quietly as possible. From time to time Sister Salt sniffed the air for the odor of wood smoke or the odor of cooked food, but she smelled only the willows’ sweet scent and the mossy dampness of the river.
Sister Salt let out a gasp when she saw the burned ruins of the house and the barn; the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She felt a wave of icy sweat break out on her forehead. Purple daisylike flowers with bright yellow eyes had grown up through the charred debris. The fire must have come in the spring or even last winter. The door to the root cellar had been splintered with an axe, and shards of shattered canning jars littered the ground around the cellar entrance; someone had dumped all that good food in the sand. Who had hated Mrs. Van Wagnen so much? Even the fence wire was torn away from the fence posts around the chicken yard and the backyard garden; here and there among the wild amaranth, wild asters, and mustard weeds were also a few bean and pea plants and a squash vine.
The girls ate the beans and peas right from the pods. Sister Salt found a patch of coriander and they ate it by the handful, though Indigo preferred it with rock salt. Sister showed Indigo the front yard with Mrs. Van Wagnen’s “garden ladies” dressed in pink, yellow, white, and red. The hollyhocks stood taller than the fence posts, and the blossoms resembled the sunbonnets Mormon women wore; the round corollas resembled tiny faces. Indigo pushed her way past the crowd of hollyhock ladies only to discover, wherever their wide skirts of leaves brushed her legs or arms, she itched.
The small garden gate was left untouched, and the climbing red roses grew around the gate so thickly that it no longer closed; long, leafy branches thick with roses reached out in all directions. Sister Salt picked a rose, sniffed it, and handed it to Indigo, who couldn’t help herself: the rose smelled so delicious Indigo nibbled the petals and swallowed them.
Beyond the garden gate where the orchard had been, the grass and wild aster grew taller than the girls; but all of the wonderful peach and apricot trees had been chopped down, their dry remains overgrown with weeds. Sister Salt knelt down to examine a dry branch, and among the dead twigs and leaves she found a tiny shriveled apricot. She felt herself give way inside; something broke, and she was overwhelmed by the loss of something that fed so many hungry beings as the orchard had — at the destruction of something as beautiful as the peach and apricot blossoms in the spring. If this was what the white people did to one another, then truly she and the Sand Lizard people and all other Indians were lucky to survive at all. These destroyers were out to kill every living being, even the Messiah and his dancers.
Indigo came running with a skirtful of marigolds and found Sister Salt crying. Indigo patted her on the back and tried to console her but Sister Salt angrily pulled away from her. If that was how her sister wanted to behave, then Indigo would go explore by herself. She avoided the ruins of the house and the barn because she detected a faint but terrible odor still there. She stayed on the ground in the garden, hidden among the hollyhock plants so dark red they were almost black as dried blood.
Later Sister Salt joined Indigo among the hollyhocks and the bees; they sat in silence on their bedrolls, shaded by long snaking branches of fragrant red roses Indigo liked to nibble. Sister still didn’t speak; Indigo thought she must be sick because she did not eat when Indigo took out the parched corn and the dried dates. She even refused the gourd canteen when Indigo passed it. All afternoon Indigo watched anxiously as Sister alternately dozed or wept softly.
As the sun made its descent, the great canopy of cottonwood leaves left them in deep shade; the burnt ruins of the house and barn seemed to loom larger in the shadows. The horrible scorched odor from the debris seemed to increase until Indigo could not stop it even with a handful of roses pressed to her mouth and nose. Suddenly Indigo knew they had to get away from this place right away.
“Hurry!” she said, tugging Sister Salt’s arm, “get up! I think someone is coming!” Sister Salt jumped up with a wild, confused expression on her face; Indigo grabbed her bedroll and canteen and ran for the river. Once they were deep in the willow thicket on the sandy bank just above the water’s surface, Sister motioned for Indigo to stop; the moist air along the river carried sounds a great distance. Now they could hear voices and the creak and low rumble of wagon wheels; they flattened themselves on their bellies in the sand and pulled their blankets over their heads. They held their breaths and listened. The river bottom was slipping into darkness though the sky to the west was still bright gold with the sunset. The wagon sound stopped and more voices could be heard, then the sound of an axe; not long afterward, woodsmoke wafted in the air.
A dog barked. They lay motionless for so long Indigo’s legs felt numb. She smelled meat cooking. The voices were no longer as loud and she imagined they were eating. She uncurled her legs from her belly and stretched; she slowly moved each limb one at a time, careful not to rustle even one dry willow leaf.
Sister Salt listened as closely as she could to the voices. They were white people, no question about that; no Indian, not even the Indian police, talked that loud unless they were drunk. If they were only white people, then she and Indigo had a good chance of escaping in the middle of the night; but if this was an army patrol, there would be Indian policemen. Maybe this was how it was meant to be, Sister thought; this is how we will find Mama.
Suddenly Indigo felt something heavy — a pressure on her back that pinned her to the ground; for an instant she thought it might be Sister Salt playing a joke. When she raised up it was too dark to see clearly, but she felt someone grab her by the shoulders and lift her off the ground. She twisted away and fought with all her strength to break free of the hands, but it was no use.