History Lesson 
Queen of the Rodeo
For teenage girls living in the Hill Country town of Llano, life can be short on glamour and lacking in spectacle. But once a year they compete against their friends and classmates for the chance to win the most coveted title their community offers.
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Five days before the rodeo, the horsemanship competition began as dusk fell across the arena west of town. Lookers-on straddled the backs of dusty pickups and sat alongside the chutes, hooking their legs around the arena’s white fence posts. The last contestant to arrive was Jessica, who stood beside her horse trailer in tears. Earlier that evening her mare had lost her footing as she stepped into the trailer, snagging herself on the lead rope as she fell. The rope had tightened into a noose around her neck, and Princess had struggled for air until Jessica’s stepfather, Ross Parker, found a knife to cut her free. The mare had fared well—only one hind leg was skinned—but Jessica was shaken. “I’ve had her for seven years, and she’s my best friend,” she said. “I can’t stop thinking what would’ve happened if Ross hadn’t cut her loose in time.” The horsemanship competition required riders to perform a simple pattern: Each contestant was to lead her horse into the arena, mount, trot in a figure eight, lope her horse in another figure eight, back up a few steps, dismount in front of the judges, and lead her horse out of the arena. To score well, she had to show a mastery of riding, keeping the reins in one hand, her elbows down, her heels back, her horse in the right lead. Jessica had practiced the pattern again and again during hot afternoons in the back pasture, and she turned in a near-perfect performance despite her mare’s earlier fall. Kim, who had borrowed a horse, was jostled badly in the saddle. Tasia rode well but struggled with the mount. And Ashley, whom everyone expected to ace the pattern, found that Te was too eager to run. By all measures, Te was a remarkable horse: One barrel racer had offered Ashley’s father $50,000 for her, and Kelly Leifeste—after many teary conversations with his daughter—had declined the offer. But like her rider, Te hated to stand still. When Ashley dismounted in front of the judges that evening, her horse champed at the bit and stamped one hoof, prancing around until Ashley, flushed with embarrassment, reined her in. Any bets that Ashley would win the rodeo queen crown were now off.
The standout contestant of the night was Jennifer Myers, who executed a perfect pattern until the end, when the wind kicked up and knocked off her hat. Her father, Bert, had talked her into buying a new straw hat that would set off her auburn hair, and Jennifer had mistakenly bought one that was a quarter of an inch too big. Though she and her sister—the reigning rodeo queen, Stacy—had lined the hat with paper towels and duct tape, it had still gotten away from her. Jennifer was a shy girl who lived in the shadow of her sister’s glory in the rodeo arena, but the pageant provided the chance to prove she was an equally good rider. Her roping and riding commanded respect: Jennifer was the only contestant the other girls could all agree deserved to win. But she was hardheaded like her father, who pushed her to the limit. “I had her crying three nights out of the past two weeks,” Bert said of the riding lessons he had given her. “She was sitting there, saying, ‘I can’t do it,’ but I knew she could. I told her, ‘Get back on the damn horse and listen to what I tell you.’ She finally got the hang of it the other night and did it twenty times, perfect. I made her do it ten more times after that just to make sure.”
Jennifer and her sister were always flanked by a group of good-natured cowboys, men who worked for Bert or who roped with Bert or who were just friends with Bert. “It’s like I’ve got twenty dads always keeping their eye on me,” Jennifer said with a sigh. The Myerses were not wealthy people: Though descended from one of Llano County’s biggest landowners, A. F. Moss, whose vast holdings once included Enchanted Rock, Bert’s great-great-grandfather John Moss was killed for a $100 gold piece, and his descendants were cut out of any inheritance. They lived simply on a twenty-acre tract along the river where Bert traded horses. The fact that his daughter Stacy had won the rodeo queen crown last year signaled a sea change: The pageant coordinator, a cheerful blonde named Kathy Hussey, had made the contest more impartial by trying to use out-of-town judges and ensuring that ticket sales carried the same weight as the other three events. Wealthy parents could no longer buy the pageant, as had sometimes been done back when ticket sales counted more heavily.
On the afternoon of the rodeo parade, Jennifer and the other contestants lined up on Ford Street with the floats they had slaved over for weeks. “I’ll tell you what,” Bert said, chuckling. “Making one of these things could drive a man to drink.” Jennifer’s flatbed trailer carried a life-size chuck wagon and campfire, with a coffeepot brewing—complete with a wisp of dry ice wafting up like steam. Tumbleweeds and stuffed rattlesnakes lay beneath the wagon wheels, and a cattle brand cooled by the fire, along with an arrow that had missed its mark. But the showpiece was an enormous granite rock: The Myerses had built it out of stucco, beat it soundly with a baseball bat until it was craggy, and then scratch-coated it gray. Jennifer sat on top of the float in a sparkly black-and-gold top, grinning. Kim’s float sported a papier-mâché bull that snorted dry ice. Tasia’s had scarecrow cowboys and a working windmill, Ashley’s a bucking chute, and Jessica’s was draped with saddles. “Don’t forget,” David Hussey, the pageant coordinator’s husband, cautioned the judges. “Whatever you decide, you’ll be breaking four little girls’ hearts.”
The weather that Friday afternoon was muggy and oppressive, and locals who were setting up folding chairs on the town square eyed the gathering storm clouds. Llano businesses had closed early that afternoon for the parade, and the square was jammed with boys tossing firecrackers, their fingers sticky with snowcones and popcorn, and women who smoothed their hair and touched up their makeup in the humidity. At four o’clock exactly, just as the parade was entering the square, the downpour began. It was not a light spring rain but a torrential thunderstorm that soon pelted onlookers with dime-size pieces of hail. A soaked Boy Scout troop ran for cover under the gazebo. The Llano High School cheerleading squad dashed past, soaked to the bone, as did the Stonewall Peach Jamboree girls, shivering in pink formal dresses that clung to them. “This is the pits,” said one woman with a hand on her hip. “I was born and raised here, and every parade day it rains.” Bringing up the rear was Jessica, her float already soggy and wind-torn. Some of the other contestants had wisely sought cover, but Jessica stood out in the rain, clutching her hat as her makeup ran, waving at the crowd through the storm.
The rodeo began with bowed heads and a prayer of thanks for the soaking rain, which in this parched stretch of Texas was an inconvenience worth suffering. Storm clouds had skittered off to the east and a cool wind blew off the river. The stands were crowded with thousands of people from Llano and surrounding counties: towheaded children, lip-locked teenagers, women with dirty-blond hair in ultratight Wranglers, and everywhere, men in creased blue jeans, starched snap-front Western shirts, and white straw hats. The silver-buckled King of the Llano Rodeo and an early promoter of the event, 94-year-old Alex Hardin, sat in a wheelchair in the back of a pickup, smiling genially at the crowd. Glittering amid all the dirt and dust were the rodeo queen contestants, who sat astride their horses anticipating the moment, midway into the rodeo, when the crowning would take place. As the National Anthem faded, a cheer went up from the crowd and the first bronco came out bucking, his rider hanging on for dear life.The rodeo queen contestants waited in the dirt-packed area behind the chutes, where cowboys traded stories while waiting their turn to ride. Jessica was anxious. She had worn her best riding clothes—a starched green button-down shirt and new blue jeans—but she looked plain beside the sequined girls whose every move glinted and gleamed under the lights. She had wanted the crown for so long, and now here it was: not victory, she sensed, but one long, awful moment of defeat she would have to suffer in front of the whole town.
“And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for,” the announcer said after team roping had wrapped up and the rodeo clowns had finished their slapstick act. “Let’s meet our new rodeo queen!” Jessica and the other girls raced into the arena on horseback, waving at the overflow crowd that was made up of just about everyone they had ever known. The girls lined their horses up in front of the stands and looked up at the crowd with frozen smiles. As the arena quieted down, the announcer began calling out the winners of each contest. “Ticket sales: Jessica Graham!” The other girls looked at Jessica, who nodded in gracious acceptance. She had sold nearly $5,360 worth of rodeo tickets, more than any other contestant in the history of the pageant. “Personality and appearance: Ashley Leifeste!” Jessica grimaced, then remembered that she was supposed to be smiling. “Horsemanship: Jennifer Myers!” Jessica wondered if she stood a chance next to Ashley and Jennifer. Now it all came down to her parade float. Her mare shifted uneasily beneath her.
“And parade float: Jennifer Myers!” The girls all turned to face Jennifer, who had turned crimson. “The winner of the Llano Rodeo Queen 2001 pageant is Miss Jennifer Myers!” Stacy, the reigning queen, stepped forward to place the tiara on her little sister’s hat as the crowd cheered.
Jessica loped her mare out of the arena into the darkness. If she cried, she did so privately. She rode back to her horse trailer to unsaddle Princess, but when she emerged, she looked more at ease than she had in weeks. After making her way through the crowd that had gathered around Jennifer, she gave the new queen her most heartfelt congratulations. And when Ashley reappeared in the arena a few minutes later racing barrels, her blond hair streaming behind her as she made it around one, two, three barrels perfectly, Jessica clapped as a cheer went up from the crowd. “She’s a real heartbreaker,” the announcer yelled over the din, explaining that Ashley had clocked in at 15.46 seconds—the fastest barrel racing time in the history of the Llano rodeo. After it was all over, the girls walked with the rest of the crowd down to the river to listen to Les Hartman and the Texas Thunder Band. Jessica, Ashley, and Tasia danced together as if they were the oldest and best of friends, for that one night at least.
Fourteen is an age not only of deep, private longings but of stubborn resiliency—and though Jessica had not imagined she would survive the humiliation of losing the rodeo queen pageant, she had. By the end of the night, she was flushed and in high spirits. She and the other girls would be getting back 5 percent of their ticket sales as a reward for raising so much money for the Llano County Community Center. That, plus the money she won in the pageant, was its own prize.
“That’s five hundred dollars! You know what five hundred dollars is?” Jessica said, breathless. “A horse!”
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