Rodeo Austin was tactically placed to overlap with Rodeo Houston to ensure they got the brightest stars from the Houston show as well as tour stalwarts who hadn't made it into the exclusive Houston show. Hot as two-dollar pistols, the team of Ford-Anderson performed in the Austin show on the night the almost 90-year-old Willie Nelson performed, and both got choked up by his performance. Willie was the emperor of country music, or at least the Austin/Texas/Outlaw side, and he sounded as great as always. They led the applause after each song, and the pleas for an encore at the end.
Willie capped the kind of day you rarely experience on the tour. Rod rode his second bronc in the slack, but he was up in the show for team roping and tie down, and they smoked everyone in all three events. They were up again three days later in the finals, so they decided to board their horses with a friend of Carl's and enjoy central Texas for a few days.
Roy Birkelbach's horse training facility was south of Giddings, closer to Northrup and the 'Home of the Wends' in Serbin. They took a backroad that led directly to Roy's from the Lee County fairgrounds and the covered rodeo arena that hosted USTRA team ropings, calf roping jackpots, barrel races, and even PBR bulling riding events.
Rod was a passing acquaintance with a particularly choice barrel racer from Giddings, and he heard her tell her friends she was heading home for a few weeks after Houston and Austin to work with her horse.
Kathy had a particularly plush little round butt atop strong, shapely legs, at least based on the times he had seen her in shorts. She wasn't as plush up top, but she had a tiny waist, and her perky breasts seemed to fit her petite 5'3" frame perfectly. Rod knew her because she loved to dance, always arriving with a group of girls, and never leaving the dance with anyone else.
She was a 'good girl,' and there were so many good looking 'bad girls' around, she had never received his full attention. 'Why chase something hard to catch when so many are chasing you?' he asked himself. There was another reason: she was the kind with whom you'd develop a relationship beyond the 'friend with benefits' or 'fuck buddy' associations to which he had restricted himself after Hailey.
In addition to the unmarried barrel racers and breakaway ropers he had made friends with, every town had an after rodeo dance, or he would be invited to a nightclub by a local buckle bunny or bunnies. He didn't lack companionship, and his sexual assignations didn't affect his performance in the arena, but it was like eating twinkies; tasty but unfulfilling.
Carl talked to him from time to time, caught him up on Hartland Beef and his newest ranch, but mentioning Hailey was a good way to get Rod to put on his headphones and zone out. Carl did manage to give him a few details each time before he went behind his wall, but he didn't want to hear it.
But on the short trip from Austin to Giddings, Carl pursued it anyway, and got Rod's dander up.
"Look, partner, she made her choice in Belgium and made it very clear that I wasn't it. I'm not going to go back there, so there's no need to tell me about her. I wish her a good life and success in her sport, but I don't see her in my world ever again!"
"Even if she knows she made a stupid mistake and got caught in a trap?"
"Which stupid mistake? I told her Almir was the wrong horse for her. She was warned over and over before and during her affair that Abdullah was a user and abuser of young women, but she spread her legs anyway, and got used! What a shock!
"I offered to help her get out, and so did Caroline and Adeline, and it still took months of being trotted out like a show pony at affairs, and abused out of the public eye, before Adeline could convince her to accept sanctuary. Hell, by that time the dashing sheikh was tired of her anyway, so when his daddy insisted, he sent what was left of her back home.
"Don't you see the women I'm with day after day? How about Caroline and Peyton? Do I look like a guy who needs to go chasing after some asshole's discards? She's damaged goods to me, so shut the fuck up about her!"
Carl drove on through the night for several minutes before quietly saying, "For someone who doesn't care, you sure are touchy about her."
"Fuck you - she's in my past and getting more distant by the minute, so let sleeping dogs lie!"
Carl made the turn to Roy's, and snuck one more in. "Okay, but I'd think you'd want to know that Smoke's injury was the result of a vet injecting him with drugs that caused inflammation in his foreleg. That's what opened the door for the Almir, and the sheikh. Now that he's home and under Angie's care, he's improving rapidly."
"I figured. Everyone told me, and her, that he was an unscrupulous bastard, but she picked him anyway. A rich royal with million to spend on dressing her up, and a fortune in jewelry to show off on her body - her dream guy! If she had shipped Smoke home like I told her to in Belgium, she might have caught on before he used her up and tossed her in the scrap heap.
"Oh well. We all live with the consequences of our choices."
"That's easily the harshest take I've heard yet. She didn't set out to have someone take control of her and misuse her. She's unsophisticated and more than a little naïve when it comes to the high-flying set, but it never once crossed my mind that she did it for the money and infamy!"
"Shows how naïve and unsophisticated you are, Carl. If you hang with the Hiltons and their set, you'll lose that naivete pretty quickly."
Carl applied the brakes, having run up on the Birkelbach Training Center sign before seeing it. Even in the dark, the headlights made it clear they were at a racehorse training facility. One barn was well lit, and they saw someone standing by an open door waving. When they got close the headlights illuminated a female with straight dark hair hanging to her waist.
The turned on a couple of outdoor spotlights and gestured for them to park alongside the barn. When they dropped out of the cab, she introduced herself as Nancy, Roy's better half, and gave them a quick tour of the pens and stables before offering to help them feed and water the horses.
Carl was about to say no when Rod replied, "Sure! We're carrying four, including my spare calf horse, and I'd appreciate help with my three."
She chatted him up as they backed the horses out one by one, and led them to their stalls. She was quick, efficient, and expert, and full of questions and opinions. "I've been keeping up with you on the tour ever since San Antonio, but we've kept up with your football success for years. My husband is from Poteet and I'm from Jourdanton, so Cowtown having so much success was a happy surprise. Roy subscribed to some streaming service that carried your games, and we'd come home and watch CHS after we finished watching the Buffaloes.
"Which reminds me - do you know Kathy Kriegel, our local girl who is out barrel racing and calf roping? We're good friends with her parents, Bonnie and Bobbie."
"Sure, I know her, but I wouldn't say we're friends. She's more standoffish around men, but runs with a pack of girls like herself. They come to a lot of dances together, and her parents will be glad to know, they leave the same way."
Nancy looked around, spotted Carl across the way watering his horse, leaned in, and teased, "Unlike you, Hot Rod! Yardbarker and Rodeo Life both cover your shenanigans in depth - especially when it comes to the Hilton sisters! You do get around, don't you?"
Rod leaned closer and huskily replied, "Why Miss Nancy, don't yawl know most of that juicy, salacious gossip is just made up? I barely know the Hilton's, and if I was getting all the p... lovin' they claim, I'd never get any sleep!" Then he hit her with that smile, and she giggled.
"You're incorrigible! Let's get Carl and go to the house, you liar!"
Nancy had a very nice body, based on the tight jeans and sweater she wore. Rod had held to his 'no married pussy' vow all along and he wasn't changing it now, but she was a tempting little flirt.
Roy was small and wiry, like a former jockey should be, and he was more than a little bit beat up from those years, and from training hare-brained racehorses too. Most weren't, but the percentage of crazies was much higher than with cowponies, just as it was with barrel horses.
They gathered around the kitchen table for a beer, which Rod declined in favor of a Dr. Pepper. They revisited Rod's football glory, and their success on the Texas part of the tour, before Roy asked if he knew Kathy Kriegel. He admitted he knew her, but not well, and asked if she had always been a cowgirl or had other interests in school
"No, she was a lot like you; participated in just about everything our school offered. Band, twirler, student government, and yearbook, but she also played guard in basketball, was the setter in volleyball, and ran all three relays in track. She was good at everything, and we were all surprised when she decided to spend a year chasing the NFR before starting college at Texas State, which offered her a full ride academic scholarship.
"She's not off to the best start, but it's early, so we still have hope for her. What's your opinion on her as a barrel racer and roper?"
Rod grimaced and then said, "Understand, this is my uninformed opinion, and I don't want her and her gang angry at me the rest of the year, so what I say is confidential, okay?"
The Birkelbachs nodded their agreement, and Carl leaned back in his chair with a smile. Rod was bullshitting them a little. He, and every other male on the tour had noticed Kathy Kriegel, he had danced with her more than once, and he had mentioned her before tonight on the way down. He wondered how Rod would play this.
"Nancy, remember what I said about her coming to the dances with a group of girls, and she always left with them. That's makes her parents proud, I'm sure, but what I see when she's running barrels or roping is more of the same."
Nancy leaned back in her chair, and he could see her pondering his words, but Roy looked puzzled. "I'm not sure what you mean," he finally said.
"He's saying what you told Romero last week, Roy. Remember that?"
Recognition hit Roy, and he nodded. "Yeah, I can see that in her. She always wanted to be perfect! I remember her slapping her thigh after a bad pass went off her hands, as if she should have gotten it. Her coaches and teammates always told her to 'take a chill pill' or something like that, meaning to relax.
"She's cute as kitten, but she's never going to enjoy life if she doesn't learn not to be so hard on herself."
Nancy eyed Rod speculatively, thinking perhaps Rod could break her out of her shell. Kathy had never encountered anything like Rod here in Giddings, that's for sure!
They adjourned to bed after questions about coffee and breakfast preferences, and whether they had plans for tomorrow. They didn't, so she volunteered to show them around. Carl rolled his eyes and asked, "Okay, but what will we do after 8:30?"
Carl slept in the guest room, Rod in the room recently vacated by their son, a plebe at the US Military Academy at West Point. That was a great achievement, as Rod was aware; the Air Force Academy had talked to him a few times, and it was one of his final five schools. But they weren't as flexible as UT, which wanted him bad enough to reclassify his class if he stuck with rodeo for a year.
