The Sisters Brothers
‘Where is your horse?’ asked Charlie.
‘That’s what I was fighting the Indian about, didn’t I say? He stole away my pal Jesse the one night while I was sleeping. When he came back the next for Benny, I was ready to go. Well, it’s a fine day for walking. And if Old Ben can do it, so should I be able to.’ He tipped his hat to us. ‘Thanks for the company. I’ll raise a drink for you, down in town.’
‘Hope you see all your plans through,’ I told him, and he smiled a crazy smile and said, ‘Heh!’ He turned and walked away, with Benny bringing up the rear. Once he was out of earshot, Charlie asked, ‘What was wrong with the coffee?’ I passed him my cup; he took a tentative sip and discreetly spit it out. His face had no expression. ‘This is dirt,’ he said.
‘I know it is.’
‘The man brews and drinks dirt?’
‘I don’t think he thinks it’s dirt.’
Charlie lifted the cup and took another sip. He pushed this around in his mouth, and again he spit it out. ‘How could he not think it’s dirt?’
I thought of this twitching prospector and the chicken-holding prospector and the dead, headless prospector and said, ‘It would seem to me that the solitude of working in the wilds is not healthy for a man.’ Charlie studied the surrounding forest with a kind of suspicion or mistrust. ‘Let’s move on,’ he said, turning to fold his bedroll.
Tub was looking badly, and I was loath to douse him, as I thought the energy the dousing would expend was energy necessary to get us to the beaver dam. He was breathing hard and would not drink water and I said to Charlie, ‘I believe Tub is dying.’ He gave Tub a brief inspection; he did not say he agreed with me but I could see he did. He said, ‘It is only another few miles, and hopefully we’ll be there long enough that Tub can rest up and regain his strength. Better give him his alcohol, and let’s get started.’ I explained I thought it best to skip the dousing, and this gave Charlie an idea. He fetched a bottle from his saddlebags; his face wore a smile as he showed it to me. ‘Don’t you remember? The tooth doctor’s numbing liquid?’
‘Yes?’ I said, not understanding.
‘Well? How about giving Tub a splash of this prior to the alcohol? Just pour it in and let it sit awhile. It’ll take the edge off that sting, I’ll bet you.’
I was not sure the liquid would be effective without being injected, but I was curious enough that I went along with Charlie and poured a small amount of the medicine into Tub’s eyehole. He started and became stiff, expecting the pain from the alcohol, I thought, but the sting never arrived and he returned to his panting. Now I rushed up and doused him with the alcohol, and again he grew rigid, but he never screamed, he never bucked or urinated, and I was pleased Charlie had thought of it; and he, too, was happy with himself, and he patted Tub’s nose and seemed to genuinely wish him well. At this, we set off upriver. There was an auspicious feeling between us that I hoped we might hold on to.
Chapter 45
The camp south of the beaver dam was a blighted affair, little more than a fire pit and scattered bedrolls, with tools and wood scrap littered randomly in the area. At the edge of the camp stood three rough-looking men, glaring as we came near. They were a filthy group even by prospector standards, their beards matted, faces blackened with soot or mud, their clothing stained and unkempt; everything about them was dark and dingy in fact, save for the color of their eyes, which were a uniform shade of the most striking blue. Brothers, I thought. Two of them held rifles at the ready; the third was armed with pistols in holsters. Charlie called to them, ‘Has any of you seen a pair of men heading north some days ago? One of them bearded, the other not?’ When none among them answered, I said, ‘They had two mules with them, burdened with casks of wine?’ Still no reply. We passed them by and I kept an eye on their movements, for they struck me as the types who might shoot a man in his back. Once they were out of sight, Charlie said, ‘Those were not your typical prospectors.’
‘They were killers,’ I agreed. Likely they were hiding from something in their collective past, making do in the meantime by working the diggings, and judging by their looks they were not having much of a time with it.
Another mile up the river and Tub began hacking and coughing. Through my legs I could feel a hollow dryness rattling his rib cage, and I noticed long tendrils of thick blood dropping from his lips into the river. I reached down and touched his mouth with my palm; when I brought up my hand I saw the blood was black. I showed this to Charlie, who said we were close enough to the dam that we might make a temporary camp and approach Warm and Morris on foot. We dismounted and led the horses into the woods. I found a shady spot for Tub and the moment I removed his saddle he lay down on the ground. I did not think he would get up again, and I was sorrowful for having treated him so poorly. I set out my bowl next to him, filling this with water from my canteen, but he would not drink. I poured out some feed onto the ground but he had no interest in this either, he only lay there panting.
‘I don’t know where we’re going to get you another horse out here,’ said Charlie.
‘He may improve with rest,’ I said.
Charlie stood behind me, waiting. I was crouched before Tub, stroking his face and repeating his name in hopes of comforting him. His empty eyehole blinked, caving in on itself; his bloody tongue hung out of his mouth, dripping thickly into the dirt. Oh, I felt very low about it all of a sudden, and I did not like myself in the least.
‘We have to go now,’ said Charlie. He put one hand on my shoulder and the other on his pistol. ‘Do you want me do it.’
‘No. Let’s just go, and leave him.’
We walked away from the horses and to the north, to see about Warm, at last.
Chapter 46
Morris and Warm’s camp was walled in on both sides by steep, densely forested hills. We stood at the apex of the westernmost rise, looking down upon their well-groomed settlement: The horses and mules stood shoulder to shoulder in a line, a small fire smoldered before their crisp canvas tent, and their tools and saddles and bags lay in neat stacks and rows. It was late afternoon and there was a chill in the air; the sun cast an orange-white light against the trees and reflected off the river’s surface, a silvery, spidery vein. Down shore of the camp sat the humpbacked beaver dam, the water before it pooling in a lazy circle. Who could say whether the formula worked or not, but here was a fine location to test it.
I saw some movement from within the shelter and presently Morris appeared, crouching to breach its opening, and looking so unlike the fashionable and perfumed person I had known in the past I did not at first recognize him. His linens were sullied with mud and salt rings, his hair a perfect mess; his pants and sleeves were rolled back, the exposed flesh stained wine-purple. A grin was fixed to his lips and he was continually speaking, presumably to Warm, still in the tent, but he stood at such a distance from us we could not hear what he was saying. We descended on their camp at a diagonal route, walking cautiously, with care not to upset any rocks and send these tumbling down to alert the men of our approach. Nearing the base of the hill, we lost sight of the camp in a shallow; cresting this we could hear Morris’s voice and discovered he was not speaking to anyone at all, but singing a happy-worker tune. Charlie tapped my shoulder and pointed at the tent; from where we stood we could make out the interior, which was empty. At the same moment I saw this, there sounded a curt instruction from above my and Charlie’s heads: ‘Keep those hands out or it’s a bullet in the brain for the both of you.’ We looked up to find a feral, gnomelike individual sitting on the branch of a tree. He had a pistol, a baby dragoon, pointed at us. His eyes were shimmering and victorious.
‘This will be our Hermann Warm,’ said Charlie.
‘That is correct,’ said the man, ‘and your knowing my name leads me to know yours. You are the Commodore’s men, isn’t that right? The fabled Sisters brothers?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You have come a long way to get me. I am on the verge of feeling
flattered. Not quite there, but close.’ I shifted where I stood and Warm spoke sharply: ‘Move like that again and I’ll kill you. You think I am fooling around, gentleman, but I have you cold and will pull the trigger, make no mistake.’ He meant what he said, and it was as though I could feel the precise, heated spot where the bullet would enter my skull. Warm, like Morris, was barefoot and wearing his pants rolled up; also the flesh of his legs and hands was stained purple and I thought, Has the gold-finding solution been effective? I could not tell from his expression, for he only looked fierce and protective. Charlie noticed the purple staining also and asked, ‘Have you been making wine, Warm?’
Rubbing his ankles together, cricketlike, Warm answered, ‘Not by a long shot.’
‘Then are you a richer man today than yesterday?’ I asked.
Suspiciously, he said, ‘The Commodore spoke to you about the solution?’
‘In his vague way, yes,’ said Charlie. ‘But we learned the hard facts from Morris.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ Warm said.
‘Ask him yourself.’
‘I believe I will.’ Without looking away from us he whistled shrilly, twice and briefly; in the distance came an identical noise and Warm performed the whistling once more. Up through the trees came Morris then, bounding boyishly over the rise and smiling still, until he saw Charlie and me, wherein he froze, and his face washed over in unqualified terror. ‘It’s all right, I’ve got them,’ said Warm. ‘I climbed up for a look-see downriver, and lucky I did, too. Saw these rascals creeping along in the direction of our camp. They have been made aware of our little experiment here, and they’re trying to tell me it was you who told them about it.’
‘They are lying,’ said Morris.
Charlie said, ‘It wasn’t just you, Morris. The one-eyed man at the Black Skull let us know where you planned to camp. But it was your diary that proved indispensable.’
Watching Morris’s face, I witnessed his tortured recollection. ‘The bed,’ he said wretchedly. ‘I’m sorry, Hermann. Goddamn me, I’d completely forgotten it.’
‘Left it behind, did you?’ said Warm. ‘Don’t take it too bad, Morris. It’s been a busy time, and we’ve been working hard, and anyway the blame should be shared. Didn’t I let that cyclops in on our plans? And for what? A few bowls of rancid stew.’
‘Still,’ said Morris.
‘Don’t give it another thought,’ Warm said. ‘We got to them before they got to us. That’s the important thing. The question now is, what to do with them?’
Morris’s face went blank. ‘The only thing is to shoot them.’
‘Would you look at that?’ said Charlie. ‘A week in the wilderness and the little man’s out for blood.’
‘Wait now,’ said Warm.
‘There is no other way,’ Morris continued. ‘We’ll bury them and be done with it. It will be a month before the Commodore stages any further action against us, and by then we will be long gone.’
‘I should definitely feel more at ease with their threat eliminated,’ Warm ventured.
‘Shoot them, Hermann. Get it over with.’
Warm pondered this. ‘It upsets my stomach to think of it.’
‘Can I say something?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Morris. ‘Hermann, shoot them. They are going to move.’
‘If they move I really will kill them. You there, the big one, go ahead and speak.’
I said, ‘Let us into your fold to work with you. We have quit our posts with the Commodore and have no allegiance to him any longer.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Warm. ‘Your very presence here betrays you.’
‘We are here because of what we read in the diary,’ said Charlie. ‘We want to see your River of Light.’
‘You want to poach it, is what you mean to say.’
‘We are the both of us impressed with your enterprise and strength of mind,’ I told him. ‘And we are sympathetic to Morris’s decision to quit the Commodore. As I said, we have made the same decision, and were impelled to visit you.’
My words, spoken sincerely, gave Warm pause, and I sensed him watching and wondering about me. When he finally replied, however, his tidings were not in my favor: ‘The problem is that even if you are split from the Commodore—which I doubt is the truth—but even if it is so, I have no faith in your motivations. Simply put, you are a pair of thieves and killers, and we have no place for you in our operation.’
‘We are not thieves,’ said Charlie.
‘Merely killers then, is that it?’
‘You are both haggard from the work,’ I said. ‘We will assist you with the labor and offer our protection, also.’
‘Protection from whom?’
‘From whomever should come up against you.’
‘And who will protect us from you?’
‘Let us into your fold,’ said Charlie. His patience had left him and his tone was demanding, which sealed it for Warm, who no longer spoke, and when I looked up I could see his head listing back as he trained his barrel at Charlie. I was moving to draw my pistols when Warm, still listing and finally listing too far, lost his balance and fell backward from the branch, somersaulting through the air and disappearing mutely into a swath of tall ferns. Morris, unarmed, spun and ran through the trees; Charlie raised a pistol in his direction but I reached up and caught his arm. He raised his other pistol but Morris had ducked out of sight. He broke away from me to give chase but Morris had had too much of a head start to be caught and Charlie abandoned this, doubling back to where Warm had dropped—except the man was no longer there, having snuck away undetected. Charlie looked impotently at the flattened ferns, then up at me. A moment passed and he burst into baffled laughter, his face pale and disbelieving. This meeting with Warm, despite the brandishing of pistols, had been so different from our earlier experiences that he could not help but be amused by it. His amusement soon receded, however, and as we returned to our camp to regroup he became simply angry.
Chapter 47
Tub was missing when we returned. He had been so weak it did not occur to me to tie him off, but while we were gone he had stood and walked away. I followed the trail of plump, dust-covered blood orbs leading over the short hill that walled in our camp; the far side of this was near vertical and he had fallen, sliding fifty yards under his own weight before coming to rest at the root of a wide sequoia. He was butted up to this by the spine and his legs were pointed ignobly skyward and I thought, What a life it is for man’s animals, what a trial of pain and endurance and senselessness. I considered climbing down to check on him, for if he was still drawing breath it would only be proper to put a bullet in him, but his still features illustrated the arrival of unmistakable death, and I turned away from him, back to camp to find Charlie stocking his ammunition.
Tub’s death proved useful in diffusing Charlie’s upset, concerned as he was for my well-being, offering me encouraging words, a promise to go halves on a new horse, one who would be just as fit as Nimble or better. I went along with his comforts, acting solemn and thoughtful, but in truth I was not particularly unhappy about Tub’s passing. Now that he was gone it was as though my sympathy for him too was gone and I was looking forward to my life without him. He was a kindhearted and good animal but he had been a significant burden to me; our lives were not suited as mates. Many months later I became sentimental about him, and this feeling is still with me today, but at the time of his actual demise I experienced merely a lifted weight.
‘Are you ready?’ Charlie asked.
I nodded that I was. Knowing the answer, I asked anyway: ‘What will our course of action be?’
‘Force is the only way,’ he said.
‘Surely they must know that we could have killed them both but didn’t.’
‘I would have killed them, if you had not interfered.’
‘For all they know, though, we elected not to.’ Charlie did not respond and I offered, somewhat lamely, ‘If we were to enter their camp witho
ut arms, our hands in the air.’
‘I refuse to honor the statement with a reply.’
‘I am only hoping to discuss each possibility.’
‘There are but two. To leave them in peace or to visit them again. And if we visit them again, force will be necessary. They would have killed us before if it had not been for their clumsiness, and now there will be no hesitation on their part. Morris will be armed, and there will be no talking between us and them.’ He shook his head. ‘Force is the only way out of this, brother.’
‘But if we were to return to Mayfield,’ I began.
‘We’ve already been through that,’ Charlie interrupted. ‘If you want to go, go, but you will have to walk back to Sacramento for a new horse. It is your choice to make. I will see this job through with or without you.’
I made the decision to go with Charlie, then. I thought, He’s right. We tried to enter into their camp peaceably, but they would not have us. It was all the mercy I could hope for from my brother, and the opportunity to visit the River of Light was too unusual for either of us to turn away from it. My attitude about this decision was that it would be the last bit of bloodshed for my foreseeable future, if not the rest of my life; I told Charlie this and he told me that if the thought brought me comfort I should embrace it. ‘But,’ he said, ‘you’re forgetting about the Commodore.’