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Elephant Butte in the Superstition Mountains

Sometimes you really do see the elephant when you "see the elephant."

From Caldera - A Man of Blood

Caldera rolled over in the dust. His guts blazed and every breath stoked the flames. Blood from the gashes across his stomach splattered the sand in the wash where he writhed and rolled. He had thought the worst of it was behind him, but the poison had not worked itself out of his system. Its effects returned with searing agony. He held in a scream and then another. He would be easy prey for any wandering Apache warrior or gold-crazed lunatic haunting the south end of the Superstitions. Caldera pounded his right fist into the sand once, twice and three times before he fainted.

He fought his way back to awareness, not wanting to face the old witch and her nightmare world again. As the sun crawled down behind the high ridge to the West its deep golden rays flared around the unexpected.

Caldera, a second before he passed out again, saw the biggest, most god-awful size elephant in the world. Its skin was a hard, smooth gray and its one visible eye was a dark shadow. The long trunk fell into the earth pointing south. Hell, a hundred men could ride its back. The beast had to be bigger than any building in all of Arizona Territory. How such an animal could get here in the Superstitions was beyond him. Life itself was almost beyond him. Damn I'd surely like to hear that that thing roar ‘for it stomps me into the ground. When he passed out he could swear the damn think winked at him.

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"Seeing the Elephant"

Caldera wasn't the first in the West to "see the elephant," although the others saw the beast in a much different context. Caldera had seen Elephant Butte, a very real and very large chunk of rock. The other "elephant" was mythical, yet the effects of seeing it were real and often tragic. "Seeing the elephant" referred to a point in a journey when someone, some family or some group gave up, turned around and headed back home. It was a statement of failure. Fans of the mini-series Centennial will remember Levi and Ellie Zendt reaching such a point on their journey toward Oregon.

No one is sure where the expression originated, but this is one of my favorites. A New England farmer, perhaps a relative of Levi's, had heard of, but had never seen an elephant. When he heard that a circus was coming to a nearby town, he promised himself a trip to see the monster for himself. As he headed out he came to a crossroad in which the view was blocked by tall hedges. As luck would have it, the circus wagons were approaching the same blind intersection at the same time. The elephant was riding in the last wagon. As you might guess, the farmer, his wagon and his horse were run over and nearly pulverized by the speeding circus wagons. Sore and dizzy, the farmer stood up to see the wagons disappear over the hill. He looked at the personal destruction and ruin around him and said, "Well, at least I've seen the elephant."

Elephant Butte

This particular elephant is a short drive north of Queen Valley, AZ on (appropriately) Elephant Butte Drive. The rugged dirt road takes the driver by the community's golf course and into the very southern edge of the Superstition Mountains. Once the butte comes into view, you will have no doubt as to how it earned its name.

NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK

Caldera and Caldera - A Man on Fire are published by Red Willow Digital Press and are distributed through three major channels: Smashwords (Apple, B&N, Kobo and Diesel), Amazon, and Google Ebooks. Caldera is available in paperback from http://www.createspace.com/3608672. Order Caldera - A Man on Fire in paperback or e-pub format at http://amzn.to/rsXw6 or find them through Amazon, B&N or Smashword home pages.

Caldera-A Man on Fire - Caldera, the "sometimes son" of his blood father, Bull McKenzie, and Prospect, the Shakespeare-quoting Pima warrior who raised him, enters the backwaters of Western legend. Guilt over killing his wife and unborn child has driven him nearly insane. Prospect sends him on a quest, a vengeance trail, to burn out the madness. He dedicates his life to the destruction of a vicious gang led by the bandit Malon. These are the men who raped and murdered his blood mother, a sickly prostitute who had worked at the Bull 'N Belle whorehouse.Caldera rescues a spoiled rich woman named Deanna Corley, but they are quickly captured by a band of Apaches led by the medicine man Jerome. It is a reunion of neither friend nor foe, but of two desperate and angry men who share a common bond of loss. The whites are set free and Caldera abandons Deanna to a family of Mormons escaping their own demons.Bull cares little for bloodlines and sets off on a treasure hunt along the Sea of Cortez. One by one his companions fall, dying of thirst near a sea of water. Bull defeats death in a long struggle up the coast to salvation with a group of Mexican fishermen.Back in Arizona Territory he forces a meeting with Prospect. A "soiled dove" confesses a secret-Caldera is innocent of the murder of his wife and son. The real killer is Belle Delcour, Bull's former lover and business partner. Her hatred for Caldera is as limitless as her skills with poison. Prospect immediately leaves to track down and bring Caldera home alive. His quest eventually leads to an abandoned mission where Caldera is being nursed back to health by a self-made man of God called Preacher and Deanna Corley.Belle and her two midget assistants, Short and Round, and her major domo, the well-educated Black man called Hephaestus, flee California. They leave a trail of thievery, betrayal and death, eventually reaching Arizona Territory. She hatches a scheme to take Bull's money and his life. She joins forces with Gayle McCracken, Bull's oldest and most formidable enemy.All trails lead to an inevitable violent and bloody confrontation where all the events began – a small Arizona mining community called Privy.