Free The Staircase by Ann Rinaldi

pardon?"
    "You said you were leaving. What are your plans?"
    I stared up at her. Her eyes looked as if she was about to burst into laughter any minute. "I don't know," I said. "I only know I can't stay here. Maybe I'll write to my uncle William and ask him if I can come back to Independence."
    "Is he the one who taught you to swear?"
    "Yes, Sister. How did you know?"
    "I met your uncle William once."
    "You did?"

    "We Sisters come from Kentucky, you know. Before you were born. Bishop Lamy summoned us here to start the school. We came by paddle wheeler up the Mississippi. Then by wagon from St. Louis. By the time we got to Independence, three of us were taken with the cholera, myself included. We had to stay there awhile. We lost Mother Matilda to the cholera. Your uncle saw to it that we were put up in the best lodging, and he kept us supplied with everything we needed."
    I beamed. "That sounds like Uncle William."
    "What do you plan on doing when he writes that you should return? Living at Fort Bent?"
    "I hadn't thought on it," I said.
    "Your grandfather was just starting to build the new Fort Bent when we came through. I always wanted to see it. If I were a man, I'd be a fur trapper. What about you?"
    "I'd join Jesse James."
    She smiled again. "Do you think you could stay with us until Delvina has her baby?"
    "You know about Delvina?"
    "We all do. How do you think Mrs. Lacey gets food from the kitchen to take to her? We'll have to be sending her heavier blankets soon. Nights get very cold by mid-November."
    "I don't understand, Sister. How can people who believe Saint Joseph will bring them a staircase leave her up there? Who will deliver her baby?"
    "Saint Joseph will give us a staircase. And we will bring her here. That's why I want you to stay. I need to be kept apprised of her situation. As she nears her time, we must bring her here."
    "Mother Magdalena won't allow it."
    "Even Mother Magdalena isn't that heartless. Will you find out from her when she is expecting her lying-in?"

    "I haven't even met her yet."
    "You will. Soon. Maybe tomorrow. Promise me you will. And promise me you will stay until she has the child."
    Where else would I go?
I promised.

8
    BY SATURDAY I HAD STAKED out my claim in the room I shared with Elinora. My poster of Jesse James that Cassie had given me, I pasted on the wall over my bed. It was about as fine a poster as could be. It offered five thousand dollars for the capture of Jesse W. James "in perpetration of the robbery last aforesaid."

    Next to both of our beds, which were against opposite walls, were little shelves. On hers Elinora had a statue of the Virgin. On mine was my chamois sack that Daddy had given me. It had once held his Bull Durham tobacco and still carried the fragrance. In it was an agate marble I'd won in a game in the schoolyard in Independence, a piece of Mama's hair in a small locket that she'd given me just before she died, and three horsehairs wrapped around an eagle feather I'd found on the trail. It was my good-luck charm. Everybody had to have one.
    "You shouldn't have that drunken heathen's picture on your wall." Elinora stood in the doorway.
    "He isn't a drunk. He never drinks anything stronger than beer."
    "You know that, I suppose."

    "Yes." I was kneeling on my bed, straightening the poster. "I also know that he believes in out-of-body travel, that he was named after his mother's brother who committed suicide, that he doesn't swear in front of ladies, that he married his first cousin, and that his mother had her arm blown off when Pinkerton men attacked her home. Just like my father had his blown off in the war."
    "And all that makes him a hero, I suppose."
    "In Missouri he's one."
    "Missouri is a robber state. Mother Magdalena said so. She said the Chicago newspapers reported that in no state but Missouri would the James brothers be tolerated for so many years."
    "You come from Missouri."
    "Why do you think I wanted to leave? Anyway, I come from St. Louis,