The old woman lay on the trash heap in the blinding sun. Sometimes she was conscious. Sometimes she was not. Sometimes she felt the rocks her grand children threw at her. Sometimes she didn't.
Once she had been an honored member of the community. She had been strong and beautiful. She built tight shelters, she wove the finest baskets. To survive the high desert winters every person had to collect the rice grass seed. It was their winter staple. The seeds were tiny. It took back bending work from dawn to dusk to gather a cup full. Even the small children toiled. Even the warriors. When the old woman felt herself useless as a seed gatherer, she sat weaving the beautiful almost water tight baskets that they stored the rice grass seed in. But the grandmother was almost blind. And so it happened that the pattern that she wove into one basket had a break in it. It could have passed. It could have been ignored, but a power hungry elder proclaimed that the break in the pattern allowed evil spirits to enter. The seed in the basket had to be burned! The people were horrified. Every winter many died before the first roots could be dug. Without this basket surely more would die. The old woman was shunned. She crept to the camp perimeter and crouched among the feces and bones.
It was there the missionary's wife found her. They were the same age. Could have weighed the same. One was garlanded with lice, one with jet beads. There was much commotion. The old woman was taken to the mission. She was cleaned and revived. They gave her mission clothes.
When she had recovered most of her strength, she shot the missionary's wife with the missionary's gun then she walked back across the desert to her people.