The Trouble Shooter

Eleven-year-old Axel Nielsen and his ten-year-old girlfriend Elsa Johannsen were happily chatting as they walked away from Winfield, Kansas’ one-room school. But their cheery conversation quickly ended when they saw Elsa’s father striding towards them with a somber look on his face. Axel thought Mister Johannsen was going to scold Elsa. But when he noticed a large cloud of black smoke rising into the air above his family’s farm, he realized her father wasn’t going to chastise Elsa. He was coming to give him horrifying news about his parents and two brothers.

Axel, Ella and her parents boarded their Denver-bound train. And as it was the first time that they’d experienced the incredible speed of riding the rails, his fiancée and his future in-laws were anxiously waiting for the engineer to open the locomotive’s throttle. As Axel watched Ella stare through the window in anticipation of seeing the outside world whiz by, he believed all of the danger and uncertainty were over. After Mortimer Peel’s trial, he and Ella would get married, start a family, and he’d continue his work as a private investigator and trouble shooter.