October 28, 2006
Just got in from down on the border (8 p.m.). Kathy and I checked out of the Rose Canyon Suites in Bisbee, at noon, drove down to Tintown and had a great Mexican food lunch at Gaviota's (The Sea Gull), a great little dive that Kim from Va-Voom turned us onto in 2004. We were the only people in the place and it was peaceful and delightful. Had a bowl of menudo soup and two carne asado tacos. Kathy had the mole chicken burro. Just a ten all the way around. Ordered a dozen flour tortillas to go. Bill came to $17! Left $25. Man was it worth it. For the most part, the food on this trip was excellent:

• El Dorado, South Fourth Avenue, Tucson (Tampiquenia), 8.7

• Cafe Roka, Bisbee (roasted duck), 9.5

• Bisbee Grill, Bisbee (tuna steak), 7.2

• Gaviota's, Tintown (menudo and carne asado tacos), 10

On the negative side, I was invited to join Sherry and Larry Monihan, Thom Ross, Rusty York and The Top Secret Writer for lunch at a new place in Tombstone called the Depot. I was signing books in front of the O.K. Corral and told them I would join them as soon as I could. About twenty minutes later, I walked briskly up Allen the ten blocks to the Depot, got inside, found out it was a buffet sponsored by Michael Hickey. Everybody was gone, including my lunch party. Grabbed a buffet slice of cheese crisp and walked the ten blocks back to town. Found out the above mentioned Bastards had decided to eat somewhere else and never bothered to tell me.

• The Depot Buffet, Tombstone (slice of cheese crisp), 2.35

From Tintown, Kathy and I drove down to Naco and walked across the border and got into a running firefight with narco-traficantes in a black Excursion with tinted windows. I finally kicked in the driver's side window with my new boots (from Johnny Weinkauf, $650), and pulled this rangy son of a bitch out on the tattered pavement and yelled in his face, "Habla Ingles Chinga-Dinero?!"

No wait, that was yesterday in Tombstone when I met Ben Traywick at Fourth and Allen, and wished him well.

Speaking of making peace with mortal enemies, one of my most vociferous critics on the web, walked up to me in front of the O.K. Corral and said he was tired of feuding and wanted to call it off. I told him I never considered it a feud and if it was, it was a one-way feud. What a town.

I posed for so many photos with fans I felt like Roy Rogers (or at the very least like Gabby Hayes at a homeless convention). One fan I met from California, said he finally brought his wife and his six-year-old son over to Tombstone several years ago. His son had been studying my Wyatt Earp book and when they got into the corral, the son looked around and said, "This is so wrong." We laughed and laughed. That is so priceless. Another Maniac in the making.

Actually, Bob Love has really gone out of his way to make the O.K. gunfight site more accurate in the last two years, but in the old days it was pretty funky to say the least (and actually that was part of the charm).

I'll post some of my photos here tomorrow.

"If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it just about every time."
—Old Vaquero Saying