The Sisters Brothers

When it grows dark, Eli, Charlie, and Warm pour two barrels of the formula into the water, while the partially injured Morris waits in a tree to stir the formula with a branch. Against the wishes of Warm, Charlie attempts to pour the third, and last, barrel into the water as well. In the process, Charlie trips and spills some of it, burning his hand. The men watch as the formula takes effect, making the previously invisible flakes of gold “as distinct as the stars in the sky” (282).

The glow lasts for 25 minutes, during which time the men are able to collect huge stacks of gold. Eli describes the experience as something “outside of time” (283), a wonder of the human mind and its potential for invention and creativity. In this moment, he is “the happiest I will ever be as long as I am living” (284).

With the glowing subsiding, Morris moves from the tree to the dam but missteps and slips into the water. Warm jumps in to save him and drags Morris to the shore. Eli and Charlie douse the two men with hot water and scrub them with soap to remove the formula from their skin. However, both are writhing in pain and complain that they cannot see.

By dawn the next morning Morris has died, along with all nine beavers from the dam. Eli buries him, giving a brief eulogy and throwing the piece of silk from the Mayfield bookkeeper into the grave. Meanwhile, in the tent, Warm is half-blind and close to death. What’s more, Charlie’s hand is now clearly “ruined” (291).

Later that day, on the verge of death and half mad, Warm confuses Eli for Morris, confiding that “I have come to like [Eli] a lot” (297) and that he no longer feels like an outcast. Warm also offers to tell Eli (who Warm thinks is Morris) the recipe for the formula, but Eli refuses to accept this information. Warm dies.

On emerging from Warm’s tent, Eli finds six armed Native men rummaging through their camp. They discover the bucket storing the river gold and divide it amongst themselves. When one of the men looks in Warm’s tent, he is horrified, and he and the others quickly leave without taking either the brothers’ horses or pistols.

The brothers ride back to Mayfield, hoping to recover the stash of money they hid there earlier. However, the Mayfield Hotel has burned down, and with it, their fortune. As Eli and Charlie drown their sorrows with brandy in the middle of the street, the women who worked at the Mayfield approach them. Bitter about their loss of accommodation and employment, the women insult, attack, and rob the two brothers.

Eli passes out in Mayfield. When he comes to at dusk, Eli sees the strange little girl who told him about her dream about poisoning a dog. As she stands in front of him, he asks her if he is still “protected” (308), but she refuses to answer. The girl then tries to give Charlie a jar of the poisoned water that killed the dog, but Eli knocks it out of Charlie’s hands before he drinks it.

Charlie has his right hand amputated in Jacksonville since the flesh has started to rot. Afterward, Eli touches the severed hand. He also returns to the restaurant where he had been served carrots with the stalks still on and demands to have a more satisfying meal.

When they reach their shack near Oregon City, Eli finds that the brothers have been robbed: The stash of money they left behind has been stolen and the furniture and rooms overturned. Eli heads for the Commodore’s mansion. After he sneaks in, he discovers the Commodore talking to himself in the bath about the nature of “greatness” (316). Eli pushes the man’s head under the water and drowns him.

Eli and Charlie return to their family home and meet their mother at the door. Eli tells her that they are done with adventures for the time being and that he wants to work in a trading post. Their mother allows them to stay in their old room, kissing Eli below the eye. Eli lies down on his old mattress and thinks, with contentment, that for the first time in a long time “I was precisely where I wanted to be” (325).