The Sisters Brothers

Having ridden through the day, the brothers camp in a small dark cave. Eli wakes in the middle of the night to find a black riderless horse outside. The horse accepts Eli’s bit and saddle, so he decides to take it as a replacement for Tub. Two miles away they discover a dead Native man, whom they take to be the horse’s previous owner.

Charlie and Eli arrive in the town of Jacksonville. Charlie heads to a saloon and Eli to get something to eat. In the restaurant, Eli tries to maintain his pledge to lose weight, ordering a less fatty meal than the one on the menu. This confuses the staff, so he ends up with a plate of boiled carrots with the green tops still attached.

Charlie wakes up the next day with another hangover. Eli eats breakfast at the previous nights’ restaurant, avoiding, with much anguish, a cherry pie. He buys more supplies from a store. He also tries to sell Tub but at the last minute changes his mind—he keeps Tub and sells the superior black horse, for which he is bamboozled into accepting only a fraction of its true worth.

The brothers leave Jacksonville, arguing briefly about the black horse sale. Soon, they come across a caravan of empty wagons guarded by a “near starved” (89) teenager. The young man holds them at gunpoint with his rifle, until Charlie lies about having killed the teen’s father. The young man’s shock allows Charlie to knock him out and disarm him.

Charlie and Eli share their dinner with the teen when he recovers from the blow. He tells them how he set out with father, uncles, and a friend from Tennessee to find gold in California. One by one, they either died or deserted the party.

Charlie also reveals that he slept with Sally. Charlie explains that Sally has sex for money—he says that he’s telling Eli the truth so Eli gets over his infatuation and stops starving himself for her.

The teen boy asks to ride with Eli and Charlie to the California border, but they soon leave him and his old and feeble horse behind.

When the brothers reach California, they see a prospector. Eli starts to approach, but the man sneaks up behind Eli and holds him up with a rifle, jabbing him repeatedly in the leg. However, when the prospector hears a sound nearby, Eli seizes the rifle from him. Charlie then shoots the prospector in the head as he runs away. After burying the man and taking his gold, Charlie frolics in the river. Eli remembers that “Charlie had often been glad and singing as a younger man, before we took up with the Commodore” (108).

The teen boy catches up with them at the camp and collapses from his horse. When he wakes, he asks again if he can join Eli and Charlie. This time they flatly refuse, although Eli gives him his half of the dead prospector’s gold and advises him to ride back to Jacksonville and buy a new horse and clothes. Seeing the boy weeping as they leave, Eli concludes that “he was clearly doomed” (113).

Riding deeper into California, they come across a red bear. One of the prospectors they came across earlier mentioned that a man named Mayfield was willing to pay $100 for this bear’s pelt. Charlie kills the bear and Eli reluctantly skins it.

The brothers take the pelt to a town called Mayfield where Mayfield lives in the town’s only hotel, also called Mayfield’s. Flanked by four large trappers, Mayfield pays Charlie and Eli for the bear. The brothers drink brandy with Mayfield, who invites seven prostitutes to cavort with them. Eli and Charlie decide to spend the night.

Eli and Charlie become more and more drunk and aroused, when Eli notices a woman in the corner of the room “paler and not so meaty as the others, her eyes ringed with worry or lack of sleep” (127). Eli follows her when she leaves the parlor, and she reveals both that she is Mayfield’s bookkeeper and that the trappers are plotting something against the brothers. She also shows him to a secret room where Eli falls asleep.

In the morning, the bookkeeper sits on the edge of Eli’s mattress and asks if he would like to go for a walk. She finds him intriguing. When Eli goes to get his hat from Mayfield’s parlor, he notices that the red bear pelt is missing.