Ever wanted to be a cowboy? Liam Stebbing visits two ranches in Oklahoma and Kansas, where everyone seems to carry a gun and Barack Obama is a delicate subject

THE ARKANSAS RIVER is wide and slow as it passes Tulsa, on its way to join the Mississippi and flow, eventually, into the Gulf of Mexico. If you cross it on Oklahoma State Highway 97, then turn and head west by Fisher Creek, following the railroad track where double-stacked, six-engined freight trains that are two kilometres long wind through town, hooting their way from Chicago to Los Angeles, you come to the turn for Meadowlake Ranch. Read on in Wellcome to the Wild West.