Eli and Charlie experience a series of misadventures while tracking down Warm which resemble the narrative form of a picaresque novel, and the chapters are, according to one review, "slightly sketched-in, dangerously close to a film treatment.

[2][3] In 1851, Eli and Charlie Sisters, a pair of assassins of minor repute, are hired by a wealthy businessman known only as "the Commodore" to travel from Oregon City to California in order to murder a gold rush prospector named Hermann Kermit Warm, who is described to them as a "thief".

Entering California, the brothers unexpectedly spot the bear and Charlie kills it, and they decide to bring it to Mayfield, who runs an inn in a town named after him.

The brothers sneak to the stable to retrieve their horses and flee town, but a group of surly fur trappers who work for Mayfield stop them and demand they return the cash they were paid for the pelt.

As per their end of the deal, the brothers keep the majority of his enormous cache of gold and hiding a large amount of it behind the hotel's stove for safekeeping while they leave to finish their business with Hermann Warm.

Eli and Charlie reach San Francisco and seek out an acquaintance named Morris, whom the Commodore had instructed to keep track of Warm until the Sisters brothers arrived.

The journal reveals that Morris was approached by Warm, who has concocted an ingenious chemical formula that causes gold to glow brilliantly, making it highly useful for indicating the location of placer deposits in riverbeds.

While the brothers wait for Warm to die so he can be given a proper burial, a party of Indians stumbles upon the camp and robs the men of their money and the gold they had collected.

The Sisters brothers slowly make their way back to Oregon City, stopping in Mayfield on the way, only to discover the entire town burned down and the gold bullion they had hidden there missing.