The Sisters Brothers (16 page)

Chapter 44

Darkness fell before we could locate Warm’s claim, and we camped under the oaks. I doused Tub and he screamed, kicking and bucking; when the pain passed him he lay down on the ground to pant and stare at nothing. His appetite was poor but I still believed he had a good deal of life left in him, that he would soon begin his recuperation. As I drifted away to sleep I watched the treetops bowing and clashing in the wind. I could hear the river but could not place it; one moment I felt it was to the north, another moment I was certain it was to the south. In the morning I discovered it was to the east. We found Warm’s claim after lunch and decided to spend the night there, that Tub might be rested for a full day’s ride, and that Charlie and I might focus ourselves for what lay ahead of us.

The claim was an attractive and comfortable site, and we camped above the river on a grassy sandbank. A small sign posted at the foot of the claim line read:
THESE WATERS ARE THE TEMPORARY PROPERTY OF HERMANN KERMIT WARM, AN HONEST MAN ON SPEAKING TERMS WITH MOST EVERY ANGEL IN HEAVEN. THOSE WHO DIP THEIR PANS IN HIS OWN PRIVATE STRETCH WILL FIND THEMSELVES SWARMED, INSULTED, TAPPED WITH SHARP HARPS AND LIKELY LIGHTNING, TOO.
Vines were painted elaborately around these words. Warm had taken his time with the project.

Fat trout hung in the current and Charlie shot one in the head for our dinner. Upon receiving the bullet the fish issued a cloud of blood and steered sideways as the current pulled him down river. Charlie waded in and picked the fish up by the tail, flinging it through the air and onto the bank where I was sitting. I gutted and skinned it and fried it in pork fat. It was four or more pounds and we ate all but the head and innards. The thick green grass made for excellent bedding and we both slept well. In the morning a man stood over us, small and grizzled and smiling, a happy prospector reentering civilization with his hard-won pouch of dust and flakes.

‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I was just about to make a fire for my coffee when I smelt your smoke. I’d be happy to share a cup, if I might borrow your heat.’

I told him to go ahead and he stoked the coals, setting his blackened kettle directly atop the embers. He spoke to himself as he did this, offering hushed words of encouragement and grace: ‘Good, good. Tidy, tidy. Very nicely done.’ Every half minute or so he suffered a fit of twitches and I thought, He has been alone in the wilderness for too long, and has become two people.

‘You are heading into San Francisco?’ asked Charlie.

‘You bet I am. Four months I’ve been away, and the closer I get I can’t hardly believe it. I got it all worked out to the last detail.’

‘Got what all worked out?’

‘All the things I’m going to do.’ We did not ask that he elaborate, but he needed no invitation to continue: ‘First thing I’m going to do is rent a clean room, up high so I can look down and see everything as it passes. The second thing I’m going to do is call for a piping hot bath. Third thing is I’m going to sit in it with the window open and listen to the town. Fourth thing I’m going to do is have a shave, to the bare cheek, and a haircut, close-cropped and parted. Fifth thing I’m going to do is buy a new outfit from the hat to the boots. Shirt, undershirt, pants, stockings, all of it.’

‘I have to go to the toilet,’ Charlie interrupted, and he walked away into the forest.

The prospector was undisturbed by my brother’s rudeness and in fact did not appear to notice it. He was staring into the fire as he spoke; he probably would have continued talking even if I had left: ‘Sixth thing I’m going to do is eat a steak as big as my head. Seventh thing I’m going to do is get very, very drunk. Eighth thing I’m going to do is get a pretty girl and lie down a while. Ninth thing I’m going to do is talk with her about her life, and she’ll ask about mine, and we’ll go back and forth like this, civilized and properly. Tenth thing I’m going to do is no one’s business in the world but my own. Eleventh thing I’m going to do is send her away and stretch out in the clean, soft bed, like this.’ He stretched out his arms as wide as he was able. ‘Twelfth thing, boy, I’m going to sleep and sleep and sleep!’

Now the water was boiled and he poured us each a cup of coffee, the taste of which was so poor it actually startled me, and it took my every bit of politeness not to spit the liquid out. Dredging my finger along the bottom of the cup, I brought up a mound of grit. I smelled and then licked this and identified it as dirt. People will often describe something as ‘tasting like’ dirt, but this was not the case, here—my cup held earth and hot water, nothing more. I believe the man, through some lonely prospector mania, had begun brewing dirt and tricking himself into believing it was coffee. I had a mind to broach the subject with him but he was so pleased to be sharing, and I did not want to upset his pride; at any rate, who did I think I was to try and undo what had surely taken many days and nights to become fact for him? I decided to wait until his next fit of twitches and then pour out the dirt-water while he was not looking. Charlie came back from the woods and I informed him with secret looks that he should not drink the ‘coffee’; when the prospector offered him a cup he declined. ‘More for us,’ the prospector told me, and I weakly smiled.

‘I am wondering if you’ve seen a couple friends of ours,’ Charlie said. ‘They would have been heading upriver a few days ago. Two men, one bearded, one not.’

‘Had a good deal of gear with them?’ he said.

‘The one had a red beard.’

‘That’s right. Had a good deal of gear with them. Two mules loaded down with twice what Benny’s carrying.’ He pointed to his mule, Benny, standing next to Tub and Nimble. I did not think a mule could carry any more than what he was.

‘What type of gear?’ I asked.

‘Pans, canvas, rope, timber. All the usual. Only thing strange was they had four twenty-five-gallon casks, two per mule. The redhead said they were filled with wine. Wouldn’t sell me a drop, the miser! I like a drink as much as anyone, but hauling that much into the wild’s just the type of greediness that’ll ruin you. You can work a mule to the point where he won’t ever recover. These two were well on their way, it looked like to me.’

‘Any idea where they were headed?’

‘They were keen to know the location of a beaver dam I told them about. I’d only brought it up as a place they’d want to stay away from, but they had to have every detail.’

‘Where is it?’ asked Charlie.

‘Now you got the same look in your eye they had! And I’ll tell you just what I did them: That stretch isn’t worth your time. Those beavers’ll strip every bit of wood from your camp just as soon as you look away, and whatever you put in the river—a rocker or cradle or anything—is as good as gone. A damned nuisance, is all they are. Hey, that’s a good one! Get it?
Dam-ed?
’ He suffered a fit of twitches and I poured out my dirt-water into the grass. The moment his fit ceased he spied that my cup was empty and made me another, encouraging me to drink. I held the cup to my mouth, clamping my lip on the edge, thus allowing none of the liquid into my mouth.

Charlie said, ‘If our friends were headed there, we would like to pay them a visit.’

‘Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. But you’ll know you’re close when you pass a camp of men four or five miles up from here. Do not stop in hopes of making friends, for this group has no interest in socializing. In fact they are downright rude. But no matter. Two miles more, and you’ll see the dam. You can’t miss the thing it’s so big.’ He hefted the kettle to pour himself another cupful of his brew and I noticed he winced at the effort. I asked if he was injured, and he nodded. He had fought an Indian with knives and won, he said, but the Indian had taken a piece out of him, which weakened him, and he had lain beside the corpse for long hours before he could summon the strength to stand. He pulled back his shirt to show us the divot beneath his breast. Its edges were scarring but it was still scabbed at its pit—a nasty wound. I would have put its age at three weeks. ‘Got me a good one, there. I guess I got him better, though.’ He stood away from the fire and returned to Benny, strapping his cup and kettle to the mule’s load.

‘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.