“How do I like my new job?” Cherry grinned and spooned ice from her water tumbler into her coffee cup. “I love it Dad, in spite of the heat.”

Cherry’s young pretty mother laughed. “If I’d known you wanted iced coffee for breakfast, darling, I would have fixed you a pitcher of it. But it’s a good idea. Never have I known it to be so hot during the last week of June.”

Three weeks ago Cherry had started to work as nursing supervisor of the Wayside Rest Home which was situated on the Bluewater Highway about twenty miles from her home town, Hilton, Illinois. The morning after Cherry began her new job, her parents had left on a motor trip and had just returned the night before.

“Tell us more about the patients,” Mrs. Ames said. “We got home so late last evening there wasn’t time to chat. But it’s only seven o’clock, Cherry. You don’t have to leave for a half-hour.”

“Well,” Cherry began, “you both know Mrs. Nellie Harmon. You were there last month when she underwent a tracheotomy at the Hilton Hospital. She doesn’t need any nursing car, except that her tracheal tube has to be taken out once a day. We use pipe cleaners to make sure it isn’t clogged, sterilize it, and replace it every morning. She’s a wonderful patient and has decided to make the Wayside her permanent home.”

Edith Ames nodded. “I can understand that. She has no children and has been a widow for years. What about that boy who broke his leg while vacationing at the Bluewater summer camp? I read about the accident in the copy of the County News you sent us, Cherry. As I recall, his parents are famous photographers.”

“That’s right,” Cherry said. “They’re in South America on an important assignment and made arrangements by long-distance phone for Ricky to be brought to the Wayside as soon as he was discharged from the hospital. His leg is in a walking cast, which he calls his cement sock.”

William Ames guffawed. “Pipe cleaners and a cement sock! It sounds like the kind of teen-age jargon Midge Fortune uses. Makes no sense to a businessman like me.”

“Ricky Cartright,” Cherry said, clutching her dark curls in mock dismay, “and Midge Fortune are two of a kind. Ricky’s room is on the ground floor, and he shares an adjoining bath with Bob Porterfield whom he hero-worships. Bob is awfully good to Ricky, otherwise we’d all go out of our minds.

“Welcome to the sunshine city!” Cherry stared forlornly at the big placard. Tucson certainly deserved its nickname, but there was nobody at the Municipal Airport to welcome here. The waiting room, a glass-fronted portion of three huge hangars, made her feel as though she were surrounded by miles and miles of planes. After a while she wandered over to a bench and sat down with her suitcase and coat at her feet.

What could have happened to Kirk?

When Cherry had left her home in Hilton, Illinois, it had been snowing hard. And when she boarded the plane in Chicago that morning, she had been grateful for the warmth of her interlined coat. But now, here in Arizona, although it was five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon in late February, she was almost too warm in her smart red flannel suit and wished she had worn her white Nylon blouse instead of a sweater.

But she had been told that as soon as the sun dropped down behind the mountains the air would grow steadily cooler and so she had packed in her bag some twin sweater sets and a warm sports jacket. In the bat, too, were seven white uniforms and caps, a bathing suit, T-shirts, a bright checkered cowboy shirt which her twin brother, Charlie, had given her, blue jeans, donated by her father who said that in Arizona they were called “Levis”; new, shiny riding boots, a gift from her mother, and from Cherry’s harum-scarum young neighbor, Midge Fortune, an atomizer containing Cherry’s favorite brand of perfume.

Cherry walked slowly through the residential section of her little Illinois home town. It was a hot June morning and she hoped that her stiffly starched white uniform wouldn’t wilt before she reached the clinic. In two more days it would be July and then Charlie would be home, too.

Cherry’s twin brother, who was as blond as she was dark, was a student at State Engineering College. He planned to spend the summer working as counselor at Bluewater Boys’ Camp, thirty miles from Hilton. In Cherry’s handbag was a letter from Charlie saying:

“I’m glad you invested your life savings in that jalopy you call Bouncing Bess, Sis. We’ll need it all during July and August. I’m counting on you to pick me up at camp every Saturday afternoon, and to drive me back every Sunday evening. Can you believe it? Week ends at home together! I’ll probably have college on Friday, the first, but may get away sooner. Depends on final exams. My love to the folks, always including, of course, Dr. Joe and his zany daughter, Midge.”

Bouncing Bess was a battered little red convertible which Cherry had bought recently just so she and Charlie could have fun that summer. their father, who was in the real-estate business, used the family car all day long on summer week ends, driving prospective clients around the countryside.

Cherry pushed her black curls away from her damp forehead and almost wished that she had decided to drive to work instead of walking. But the new Group Medical Practice Clinic was only a few blocks from the Ameses’ little gray house. And Cherry, who had been away from home almost constantly ever since she had left it to enter Spencer Hospital’s Nursing School, was still thrilled by all the familiar sights and sounds and smells.

Now that the April sun had slid down behind the rocky ridges, it was cold in the valley. Cherry hurried along, hoping Bertha would have set a match to the blazing logs in the fireplace of their small room behind the makeshift clinic.

Cherry was as tired as she had ever been in her whole nursing career, but she knew that plump Bertha Larsen, who had been hobbling around on crutches all day, would be even more exhausted. Cherry glanced up at the sunset, veiled by the mist that hung above the thickly wooded mountain. Lonely little cabins perched precariously on the lower slopes of it; gray unpainted barns dotted the hillsides. Between the pastures and the farm lands narrow dirt lanes spiraled, following the path of mountain streams.

In the growing twilight, Cherry felt hemmed in by the dark-green palisades. There was something almost sinister about the shadows that lay across the valley floor. Desolate Mountain had certainly been well named. Cherry felt sure that there could not be another village in the whole state of Kentucky as isolated as Heartbreak Hollow.

But in spite of the fact that the people were poor and, for the most part, ignorant, it was a happy place. Daniel Boone, it was said, had given the village its name, because, after an attack by the Indians, only two of the original frontier families had survived. Later, other pioneers had come to build their log cabins and to struggle for existence side by side with the Smiths and the Clarkes. They brought with them the customs, idioms, and traditions of their English, Scottish, and Irish ancestors, and even now the older members of the community were reluctant to relinquish them.

The children, in spite of their sporadic schooling, were slowly but surely freeing themselves of the idioms and superstitions. In general, the fathers although they kept saying they didn’t want to be “beholden” to the doctor and nurse, were much more modern-minded than the mothers. But the grandparents were not of the twentieth century and didn’t want to be.

The big silver-gray bus stopped at the junction just long enough for Cherry to jump off and reach up for the bags which the driver handed down to her. Then with a derisive blast of its horn it sped away as though it wished to shake off the dust of this desolate countryside.

“Weatherly,” Cherry though, “must be the tiniest village in the while U.S. A. And yet it’s only four hours from New York City, and once was a prosperous mining town.”

The only buildings still standing was the abandoned railroad station which consisted of a baggage platform precariously attached to an unpainted shack that looked as though it were going to collapse any minute from sheer boredom. A dirt road stretched away from the junction to lose itself in far-off scrubby hills. Cherry knew that on one of those hills was a hospital. Somebody on the staff should be driving down the road now to meet the new night supervisor.

Night supervisor! Cherry could hardly believe that this evening she would actually be on duty in that coveted role. The opportunity had been offered to her by Dr. Van Laughton, Chief of the Pediatric Service of Spencer Hospital where Cherry had trained. Last fall she had gone back for duty in the new Children’s Wing. At Dr. Laughton’s suggestion she had continued her postgraduate training, working as assistant to the Superintendent of Nurses in order to fit herself for a supervisory position at Weatherly Hospital.

“It’s one of the oldest institutions in the country,” Dr. Laughton had told Cherry. “The main section, which is in an old frame building, was built way back when surgery was in its infancy and asepsis was unheard of. But don’t let that worry you. The new wings are as modern as anything here at Spencer, and what is more important, they’ve got Bates Darby on staff. How they wangled it, I’ll never know. But he’s there, and since most babies are born at night or in the early morning, you’ll be working closely with one of the leading obstetricians in North America. At the end of this assignment, which will probably amount to a post-graduate course in midwifery, you can classify yourself as an obstetrical nurse.”

It was Dr. Joe Fortune who had give Cherry a more complete picture of what her new job would be like. Dr. Joe, who lived near Cherry’s home in Hilton, Illinois, had brought her and her twin brother, Charlie, into the world. He had inspired her to take up nursing and she had never regretted her decision. Through her work she had made many warm friends who had shared exciting adventures with her and had helped her solve some really baffling mysteries.