Page 5 of When The Dust Settles

Two years ago, because Mitch Powell, the builder and owner of the Kings Crossing Resort and Spa, owed Rand Holloway a few favors, he paid off one of them by giving me a throwaway location for my new restaurant, The Bronc, next to the golf clubhouse. We weren’t in the main area where all the other restaurants were, and because of that, people had despaired of our chances for success. The thing was, though, it was my dream, and I had been thinking and planning it for years. So when it came time to execute, I did.

We covered the parking lot in the same rubber they used for play areas for kids at school, put poles up so no one could drive in, filled the entire space in picnic tables, and built a counter ledge all the way around it. Only families got to sit at the tables. It was funny how many times single parents, or two men or two women, made the choice to think we didn’t count them in our definition of “family.” How many times was I stopped and thanked, told that a member of my staff had brought them to a table, sat them down, and explained that, yeah, if you had kids, you got to sit and take a load off. If you had grandparents with you, you got to sit. But two on a date, or a group of guys, that’s what the ledge was for, just wide enough to put a plate on. You had to shovel your food in while standing up. But for people with strollers, people with teenagers, there was a table with an umbrella over it just waiting for you.

The comments on Yelp, Zomato, and TripAdvisor, on our Facebook page, on our Twitter feed, as well as in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, were all wonderful. The service was fantastic, everyone said across the board. Whoever owned The Bronc really knew how to take care of people. All the comments were really nice to hear. When Guy Fieri showed up to tape an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, I nearly passed out. And even though I wasn’t the one in the kitchen cooking for him, I could not have been more proud when I shook his hand and he thanked me for having him there. It was my place, after all. The Bronc Burger, made with ponzu sauce and buffalo meat, was apparently one of the best things Guy had ever had. I was thrilled, so was my staff, and the influx of new patrons staggered us all. As a result of all the good feedback, press, word of mouth, and independent foodie blogs, the business took off and the money came rolling in.

It was, in my opinion, the coupling of amazing food and great service. When we first opened, all we served was a steak plate—cubed pieces of meat marinated in garlic and red wine sauce—and hamburgers. That was the extent of our selection, except for the sides. There were tater tots, sweet potato fries, coleslaw, mac ’n’ cheese, and chili. We didn’t have a kids’ menu. You could order a half, though, and what kid didn’t like mac ’n’ cheese? Soon after we added this amazing tofu burger. It sounded gross when we added it to the menu, but holy crap, did we sell a ton of them. I had my own chef for that, Han Jun. His mom was East Indian, his dad was from Okinawa, and he was the one who added the ponzu sauce to the steak too, which made the garlic taste even better. Because the tofu burgers were so popular, instead of opening up a second grill in the back, I made it the vegetarian area. The grill was new; it had never had any meat cooked on it, ever. We even had a sign over it that read: If you’re packing meat, get the hell outta here.

Really, the tofu burgers, made with all the same stuff as the steak except for the cow, were a bigger hit than I thought they would be. What started out as a “maybe” changed into a great addition, another dimension to the restaurant, and the vegetarian window three of my girls painted and decorated so it looked like an entrance to a secret garden was what a lot of people made a beeline for.

Inside we had a full bar, and seating was basically a huge island for drinking along with eating. There was no place to park yourself inside unless you were drinking. The food part was all outside.

In the winter we tented the parking lot and got space heaters and blowers. In the summer we had misters and fans. What was nice was that Stefan Joss, Rand’s partner, negotiated everything for me when I first moved in. He was scary, and that had surprised me. He looked sort of sweet, but then all of a sudden, you found yourself faced with a predator, all teeth and claws.

Stefan negotiated the one thing I had no idea I would need—a flat utility rate. For seven years. I almost passed out.

“How?”

“Gifted.” He smiled at me and his pretty emerald-green eyes glinted.

I was so thankful at that moment, I sold my soul to the devil and told Stef that whatever he needed, I was his guy. I owed him and no task was too much, no favor was too great to pay. And now, after two years, Rand was collecting on what I owed his partner.

It was why I went away for a few days of solitude.

I needed to be in a calm place before I had to submit to taking orders from Rand and listen to his foreman, Mac Gentry, tell me how stupid I was. I needed to be cool and grounded before I left with them for a long weekend of driving a small herd of cattle—only two hundred head plus calves—from grazing land up in the Panhandle down to the feeding ground on the Red Diamond.

At least, that’s where I thought we were going. I wasn’t positive. They weren’t Rand’s cattle, meaning they weren’t born and raised on the Red; instead, he’d purchased them at auction when the ranch they were living on was seized by the federal government in a USDA raid. Apparently tainted beef was tracked to the Bannon Cattle Company in Montana, and when undercover FDA agents went in to investigate, they found gross violations everywhere from the stockyards to the slaughterhouse. The cattle were being treated inhumanely, and more importantly, killed painfully and sloppily. At auction, no one wanted to put the time and money into grazing the cattle or seeing if the two hundred head left could be salvaged. Except Rand.

Rand bought them all, had them trucked from Montana to Texas, and they’d been grazing for the past six months separate from his own herd. It was easy to pick out Rand’s cattle from any others. He didn’t castrate, dehorn, tail dock, or perform tongue resection on calves. At the Red Diamond Ranch and Cattle Company—he added to the ranch’s name when he started shipping beef internationally—he had also done away with branding the year before. No one stole cattle from Rand Holloway. He had too many men—normally, just not this weekend—and he had become his own law. All Red Diamond cows were healthy, strong, and treated like a gift. No one mistreated anything on Rand’s ranch, and though there were people who found killing animals to eat them an abomination, even they could tour the Red and find no instance where any livestock suffered.

People were another matter. I, for one, would be suffering this weekend.

Between weddings, childbirth, and vacations, Rand was short-handed, so he called in my marker with Stef. I had to go sit in a saddle from sunup to sundown for three days, beginning early Friday morning and concluding late Sunday night, and look happy about the whole experience.

So, I had needed to relax and fish before I rode into hell.

The drive was starting out early the next morning, so after the meeting broke up, I offered to drive Josie to her friend’s house, where she would be staying for a week. I also had to stop at my place and grab my gear since I had to report to the Red in only a few hours.

“Aren’t you going to be tired?” Josie asked.

“Maybe I’ll sleep through the bullshit.”

“What?”

I shook my head because I didn’t want to start talking about my family.

She got in the truck with me and I drove us to my house. As she stood in my living room glancing around the bungalow, I got the feeling I was being judged.

“What?”

She coughed. “Oh no, nothing.”

I realized I needed to throw away the five empty food containers on the coffee table in the living room. “Just spit it out.”

“You, uhm, live here alone, don’t you?”

“Yeah, why?”

She shook her head and gave me a big smile. “I was just wondering.”