The Sisters Brothers

Eli and Charlie go for a drink in a bar in Oregon City. Charlie reveals that because he will be the “lead man” on the upcoming job, he will be paid more. Their task is to track down and kill a man named Hermann Warm in San Francisco.

The next day, the brothers ride to a forest 20 miles away. There they come across a “weeping man” (13), with whom they share food. When questioned about why he’s weeping, the man can only repeat the phrase, “They’re all gone!” (14). He then leaves.

As they continue riding, Eli asks Charlie why the Commodore wants Hermann Warm dead. Charlie answers that Warm stole something belonging to their boss. Eli finds it strange that all these men are so foolish as to steal from someone as powerful as the Commodore.

After a night camping in the open, Eli discovers that a poisonous spider has bitten him. He develops a fever. Charlie rushes off to the nearest town to find a doctor, who, on arrival, gives Eli a shot of antivenom. However, the next morning, Eli’s head has massively swollen up, so they ride to another town to find a different doctor.

Luckily, in the next town they meet a dentist named Watts. He gives Eli a local anesthetic and lances his inflamed face, while also removing two rotten teeth. Impressed by the anesthetic, Charlie tries to buy some. When the dentist refuses to sell, Charlie steals it at gunpoint.

Eli and Charlie stop to rest at the hut of a strange old woman. She claims to know that they are killers “by the dead men following behind you” (30). Despite being unnerved, they spend the night in her cabin, and Eli has a dream about the woman poisoning Charlie.

In the morning, the brothers find that the old woman has left. However, she has put a string of beads at the cabin’s entrance—something Charlie believes will curse them if they walk through the door. Charlie climbs through the cabin’s window, but Eli is too big to fit through it, so Charlie decides to find some tools to knock out a larger section of the window and free his brother.

While Charlie is gone, Eli notices a grizzly bear approaching his tethered horse Tub. To save Tub, Eli breaks the cursed beads on the door and runs to shoot the bear dead. However, the bear strikes Tub’s eye and knock the horse to the ground before Eli can intervene.

Eli is surprised to find that Tub survived the bear attack. He decides not to tell Charlie that he broke the beads and climbs back into the house to wait for Charlie to return.

Charlie comes back and frees Eli by smashing open the window frame with an axe. He reveals that he took this implement by force—the prospectors he came across “were hesitant to loan me their equipment” (42).

The brothers come to the camp of the prospectors Charlie killed to get an axe. Five of them lay slain along with their horses. Charlie rifles through their clothes and offers Eli a watch he finds on one of the men. Eli refuses to take it.

Eli and Charlie stop at a trading post. They visit a clothes shop. Charlie intends to buy only a new shirt, but the shop owner convinces him to get a whole new set of clothes, and to buy Eli a new shirt and hat. Afterward, the brothers decide that the business of a shop owner is “tidier than killing” (50).

The brothers stay in a hotel at the edge of town. There, Charlie uses the stolen anesthetic on his face, and then asks Eli to hit him. His numbed face feels no pain. They then head to a nearby saloon.

Charlie wakes the next morning with a bad hangover and sends Eli out to order a hot bath and to get some medicine from the chemist’s. After ordering the bath from a maid, Charlie returns with morphine (a legal and commonly used analgesic in the 19th century). He overhears Charlie talking to himself in the bath—criticizing Eli.

Upset with Charlie, Eli finds the hotel maid (Sally, though we won’t find out her name till later) and asks for scissors to take out the face stitches the dentist put in. She wishes to watch him perform this procedure and invites him to do it in her room.

Eli takes out his stitches in Sally’s room, which he finds to be disappointingly unfeminine. They then brush their teeth together and briefly talk. Eli asks if he might kiss her, but Sally claims to be in a hurry, adding that she has “a preference for slight men” (66).

Before leaving town, Charlie, Eli, and Sally attend a duel between a gentleman lawyer, Williams, and a ranch hand named Stamm. In front of the assembled crowd, Williams shoots first and misses. Showing no anxiety at all, Stamm shoots and kills Williams.