I had only been in Tombstone half an hour when the shooting started. Apparently, it was the Republicans and the Democrats at it again.

This was just the kind of thing I had come to Arizona to escape.

Like most people in this year of interminable electioneering, I had had enough of politicking, of spin and soundbites, of poll figures and attack ads.

I was heading deep into the southeastern corner of the state in the hope of escape. I was looking for a quieter America, for a ranch somewhere with wide, empty landscapes, and cowboys with few opinions beyond yup and nope. When I stopped for lunch in Tombstone, I hadn’t expected to be detained by a gunfight on Main Street.

Going native in the USA

Oregon’s annual Nez Perce Indian gathering is a Native American ritual, a pilgrimage and a knees-up

Obama v McCain fever in Washington

It’s an election battle with global implications, and the front line is Washington, DC. Rob Ryan is in the thick of it

Six of the best US holidays

If planning the trip of a lifetime Stateside, where would six Times writers and US specialists go?

Related Internet Links

• Read more than 500 USA travel articles

Related Links

• Obama v McCain fever in Washington

Trouble had been brewing all morning. There had been heated words outside the Bird Cage Theatre. Threats had been exchanged at Big Nose Kate’s. Now, Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Virgil and Morgan, with old friend Doc Holliday, were advancing down Main Street in spangly waistcoats. The Clan-ton gang had been spotted at the OK Corral. A crowd drifted after them. “There’s going to be shooting,” a fat man from Ohio helpfully informed his fat wife.

To some people, this was the Gunfight at the OK Corral, in which the Clantons are gunned down in a hail of blanks every day at 2pm. To others, it is part of America’s political feud. The Earp brothers were the hired guns of the Republican hierarchy, the owners of the big mining and cattle operations who wanted to make Tombstone “safe for investment”. The Clantons, humble cowboys who wanted to preserve a bit of economic space for freelance prospectors and small independent ranchers, were aligned with the Democrats. You can see how much has changed in 127 years.

I didn’t wait for the final body count. I was a man on a mission. I climbed back into the hire car, a big beast appropriately named Bronco, and spun away down an empty highway. Telegraph poles flashed by. Yellow hills rolled into empty distance. On the radio, crackling with static, a man was singing, “All my exes live in Texas, and that’s why I hang my hat in Tennessee.”

In Douglas I stopped for a coffee at the Gadsen Hotel. It is the town’s only moment of glamour, built a century ago for cattle barons. In the lobby, a grand double staircase rises past a vast spread of Tiffany stained glass. One night, a drunken Pancho Villa is said to have ridden his horse up these stairs, firing into the ceiling as he went. You can still see the chipped marble on the seventh step.

Pancho probably didn’t read English – which explains why he missed the sign on the door of the Saddle & Spur lobby bar: “No firearms or weapons of any kind”. The bar was empty but for the barman, who had fallen asleep in front of a “wanted” poster. On the television in the corner, people were waving flags and banners while John McCain, the Arizona senator, was giving them the thumbs up. I turned the set off and stepped next door into the diner for “All the coffee you can drink – one dollar”.

BACK IN the Bronco, I followed Highway 80. It ran like a drawn line through the empty grasslands of the San Bernardino Valley. In an hour’s driving I saw two other cars, neither of them sporting political bumper stickers. From time to time, distant homesteads appeared, set back a mile or so from the road, tucked into folds in the long, yellow hills. It was remote country. My mobile couldn’t get a signal. Hopefully, I was beyond the reach of Fox News as well.

Price Canyon Ranch lies at the end of a long dirt road in the foothills of the Chiricahua Mountains. It was just the kind of place I was looking for. I wanted a real working ranch, not a dude ranch with an infinity pool and a spa and a yoga class. I wanted somewhere that felt like the West, somewhere comfortable but rustic, not a citified luxury resort where you expected to find the horses on the sun loungers, sipping martinis.

Price Canyon has 10 guest rooms elegantly decorated in western style with hardwood floors and Navajo rugs. One of the old barns has been beautifully converted into a large central lounge with a stone fireplace, deep leather sofas, a library of western books and a dining area where meals are produced by the wonderful Fred Tullis, a painter-turned-chef. If food is the heart of a home, Fred and his generous country meals are the heart and soul of Price Canyon.

Times recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• The UK and Ireland's 25 best Christmas events
• Chalet Chef 2010: the winners