SOMETHING’S up. “Whoa back there,” hollers Byron, our guide, waving an arm in warning. “We got us a rattler. Throw me dat ’der pistol won’t ya, Taylor.”

We draw to a halt. Taylor pulls out a Colt .22. “Where’s he gone . . . ’der he is!” A dulled firecracker sound plays out across the plains — followed by another.

Byron holds up the dead snake, and hands me the rattle pod pulled from the tail. “Here’s a souvenir from the real Texas, buddy!” There are plenty of places in the States to experience “Frontiersville” USA. Former car park attendants at Florida theme parks dress up in chaps to deliver the Wild West, tourist-style — no cow dung thrown in.

Towns across California play up the lawless Gold Rush days — clapboard houses reconstructed and aged for authenticity. “Dude ranches” throughout the Midwest offer a processed taste of cattle life.

Having visited the States many times before, I wanted to get away from all that: to experience old-style ranch America that’s not-for-the-tourists-at-all. But how? The Pulitzer prize-winning author Annie Proulx provided the inspiration.

Her novel That Old Ace in the Hole decribes life in the Texas Panhandle, part of the far north of the state shaped as though you could grab hold of it. Its theme is how modern ways of living are beginning to threaten ranchers’ existence. Despite this, she makes clear, the region remains at the heart of true cowboy-land, almost forgotten by the rest of microwave-meal USA.

And it’s full of characters, as Proulx, who spent months researching the book, finds. “This was the original cowboy country and it still is the most cow of anywhere,” says one, early in the novel. “So people here are pretty rugged. This country was made for cows, once they got rid ’a the buffaloes. To live here it sure helps if you are half-cow and half- mesquite and all crazy.”

I soon found them too, although a holiday in the Panhandle is by no means a traditional package trip. Tourists can be as much of a novelty to locals as locals are to tourists — which gets people talking.

We’re on Mill Iron Ranch, 30,000 acres near Wellington. It’s run by Don Allred, a man who wears a Stetson to keep the sun off his face and spurs to speed up his “hoss”, not to look the part for visitors. He has begun taking horseback tours as a way of “maybe makin’ a few bucks”.

He tells me about ranch life: “I’m big on tradition. We rope ‘n’ drag instead a runnin’ cattle through chutes. I wanna pass the old ways on to my children, ’ya see.”

After the ride, we stop at the Wellington livestock auction. A semi-circle of stands overlooks a pit surrounded by a metal fence on which guys rest their boots, watching animals being herded in.

A sign says: “Not responsible for accidents, man or beast”. There are enough characters about to fill two or three Proulx chapters.

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