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It's the middle of a thirty-city book tour, and I miss home. It's not that the tours are difficult and they are fun, but I just start missing my own bed, my ranch projects and, most importantly, my writing. I've finished the fifth in the Walt Longmire series and even started the sixth, but I've got three more weeks on the road before I can settle down at the ranch and really get going again.

Two days here at the ranch-just long enough to unpack, do laundry, repack, and head out for the coast-but I had my first-ever event in Ucross last night. The Ranch at Ucross has busloads of folks who roll in there everyday to take advantage of western hospitality and the pool, tennis courts, horseback riding, and wonderful food. I know this, because I ate there last night-the first time in seventeen years-and then read, answered questions, and signed books. There was something special about doing an event that I could walk to and, since the guest ranch and the Ucross Foundation are our only going concerns since Sonny George's junkyard closed and somebody used the bar as a literal drive-thru (a Caterpillar bulldozed it a bunch of years ago), I've felt a certain responsibility to hold up my end of the town of twenty-five.

There's a story about the bar-well lots of them actually-but this particular one figured in my decision to make the crown jewel of the UCLA (Ucross, Clearmont, Leiter, and Arvada) area my home. I had just graduated from college and had taken the summer to work up in Montana. The rancher I was cowboying for had me deliver some horses to Ucross, where I was supposed to meet up with a fellow from Tulsa by the name of Schaffer. I got there, but the other guy didn't show. I went to the payphone and called the rancher I was working for and explained the situation.

"Well... Don't worry about it, he'll be there. I don't think he's left yet."

I paused with the receiver in my ear. "From Oklahoma?"

"Yep. Just unload the horses in the public corral and buy some small bales from a local rancher, Schaffer'll be along in a couple of days..."

I thought about it. "Well, that's fine for the horses, but what about me?"

There was a pause before he rumbled out a laugh. "Well, they've got a bar!"

I spent the next seventy-two hours in the company of the local ranchers, cowboys, roughnecks, artists from the Ucross Foundation and, most importantly, the cowgirls. By the time Schaffer pulled in and we loaded the horses, I'd marked Ucross, Wyoming, on the battered Rand-McNally atlas that I stored behind the seat of my old 1960 pick-up, and Ucross, Wyoming, had marked me. I lived in a lot of places as more than a quarter of a century passed, but my thoughts would always drift back to the place where Piney and Clear Creeks joined.

Most of my youth was spent in a nomadic lifestyle, and I covered a lot of ground, but I'll always be thankful to the tiny town that taught me the meaning of home.

I'm in California tomorrow. I'm scheduled to do an interview for a feature with the Los Angeles Times at the Gene Autry Museum--apropos huh? Then up to San Francisco for M is for Murder in San Mateo (7 PM, June 25) and the Book Passage Mystery Conference at Book Passage in Corte Madeira-then back to LA for The Mystery Bookstore event (6:30 PM, July 1), Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks (12:30 PM, July 2), and in Montrose at Once Upon a Time (7 PM, July 2).

Check out http://www.craigallenjohnson.com/.

See you at a bookstore near you...

Best, Craig.

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Craig Johnson, Another Man's Moccasins, Kindness Goes Unpunished, Sherriff Walt Longmire, western, Penguin Books, books