Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

The trailer’s heat is out — again.

Kay Studhalter spent Monday night buried beneath so many blankets that she and her niece Gussie Armatys were rendered immobile by the weight. And now, at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday morning in Pinehurst, a pick-up truck parks in front of Kay’s trailer, blaring the early morning cattle call song, like every morning on the trail.

Kay is torn. The only reason she slept through a frigid night in this old camper is to hop on horseback as soon as the sun’s up and continue her ride toward the city with the Sam Houston Trail Ride. But does she really want to suit up for a 15-mile slog through a day so wet and cold that it’ll leave her feeling like a used mop?

Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Staff Photographer

“No,” Gussie groans, with history’s longest “o,” as the music continues swirling around them: “… For hours he would ride, on the range far and wide … ”

Kay’s up now. She finds a pair of long underwear, and grabs her freshly starched jeans. They’re so stiff, it feels like jumping into two steel pipes. But being a cowgirl isn’t about plush comfort and easy roads.

Maybe that’s why the group she belongs to — the 2,000-some adventurers who usher in the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo each year by riding into town on horseback and in covered wagons in the annual Trail Ride — is steadily declining from its peak of 4,000 riders.

Sam Houston is just one of a dozen rides — and a smaller one at that. While Sam Houston once had 300 riders and 20 wagons, it’s down to 80 riders and nine wagons. Between Monday and Friday, they wend 70 miles from Montgomery County to Memorial Park, where they join members of the other rides who have traveled from all over Texas and Louisiana.

Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

This parade of horses and wagons is the very symbol of manifest destiny. But now that the city of Houston has swelled to the fourth largest in America, with ever-loosening beltways, there seems to be less demand for these heritage rides in our modern world. And less tolerance for them — as the group learns Thursday during an unnerving incident that sent one horse to the vet.

Gussie is quick to get ready, sliding her jeans over the leggings she wore to bed, before rushing outside. It’s up to the kids to saddle the horses in the morning. A third-generation Sam Houston rider, 13-year-old Gussie is one of a dying breed. Even the kids who are born into trail riding seem to give it up once pressure from school and social circles build.

Trail rides aren’t the kind of activity that court casual enthusiasts. You’ve got to really love it to wake up before dawn and saddle horses as your hands grow numb. But Gussie? Gussie loves it.

Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Staff Photographer

On Tuesday, she and her fellow riders snake through Tomball. About an hour in, a local homeowners’ association sets up a kolaches-and-coffee breakfast for the cowboys and cowgirls, who pause to show off their horses and wagons to local kids in what looks like an 1836 version of a touch-a-truck event. The reception in downtown Tomball is even better though, Gussie says. People line up along the streets, and the riders are honored by the city for their efforts to preserve Texas’ heritage. Volunteers hand out hotdogs, and Gussie smuggles extra packages of cookies wrapped in bandanas into her saddle bag.

All the to-do makes Gussie feel like a star, as she, Kay and Taryn Sims lead the pack into town, each carrying a big flag. In a perfect world, Gussie could ride the Big Ride, as they call it, every day of her life. But in this world, she’ll leave halfway through the week. Blame eighth-grade algebra (“The worst thing ever”), and a Saturday afternoon drill team competition.

She’s not alone in this. Alexis Korioth, 23, has been searching for a good WiFi signal all week to turn in homework, and has to skip Wednesday and Thursday to take tests at Sam Houston State University, where she’s studying public relations. Taylor White, 22, has to scoot out early Tuesday night for her EMT class.

The juggle is real for this young generation, even among the most-dedicated riders like Alexis and Taylor.

Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

Taylor’s father, Keith White, keeps his hands on the reins as his two Percherons, Sunny and Star, pull Wagon No. 9 through the streets. He doesn’t wave like the cowboys on horseback when oncoming traffic rubbernecks at the spectacle. He’ll give a tight smile though, maybe a nod of his head or a tip of the cowboy hat he wears, with a paper shamrock and an Ace of Hearts card tucked into the inside band for good luck.

In Keith’s eyes, there’s nothing like the fanfare in these first few days. Drivers stick their hands out the windows, waving as they pass. Some take photos or record video.

“This’ll all change the closer we get to Houston,” Keith says, his voice low and gruff. He feels like people in the city have no patience for the trail ride any more. It’s a head-shaker for him. He remembers better days when they were received like kings. Now, the folks at the trail ride get phone calls from angry residents bemoaning the traffic nightmare this creates.

“It’s all, ‘You’re making me late for work!’” he says.

Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

There isn’t much of this ride that’s built to live in the modern world. The horses need special non-skid shoes to manage the paved roads, lest they constantly battle the pavement like a novice ice skater. Coil springs catapult the wagon over pop-up road reflectors in spine-shaking lurches. And the traffic builds each day as the ride tests horses’ sensory limits beneath underpasses and over railroad tracks.

And the city of Houston, notorious for its expansion into the unclaimed lands that hug its bloated borders, pushes back against every notion of the ride, adding difficulties at every turn.

This anachronism, charming from the grassy sidelines in Magnolia, feeds Houstonians’ insatiable road rage, giving drivers one more thing to curse. The cell phone videos shot by passersby in their super-cab trucks on day one give way to driver’s-seat scowls by the end of the week.

All on the Sam Houston Trail Ride’s 65th birthday, an anniversary that often brings up discussion about whether one should hang up their hat and retire. But the members of Wagon No. 9 have no desire to let this tradition end.

Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

There’s a sponge-like quality to the hospitality of this wagon, like they’re ready to absorb and adopt anyone they meet. They’ll feed them fried chicken by the side of the road on a sunny afternoon break, and warm them up by the fire with a bowl of Barbara Petty’s cowboy stew, and mile-high heap of Glenda Fraysur’s extra-fluffy banana pudding.

People say “we’re like a family” to describe so many things that the phrase has become nearly meaningless. Until you step into their camp, anyway.

The wagon members have ridden together for decades. Trail boss Bruce Fraysur has been here the longest. Now 60, he embarked for his first Sam Houston ride 45 years ago, when his uncle extended an invitation.

“We used to raise some hell,” Bruce says.

Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

But now they’re just a bunch of “used-ta-coulds,” Calvin McKinney says one night around the fire. They’ve (mostly) grown out of childish ways — as have their children, and grandchildren, to be honest — and have evolved into an extended family. If it wasn’t for Bruce finding her an affordable trailer and fixing its tires, Alexis says she wouldn’t be able to continue riding now that she’s in college.

Though they have grown closer as they’ve dwindled in numbers, there’s still plenty of nostalgia for the way the trail used to be, Dianne Williams says on Wednesday night, during the ride’s annual dance at Spring Creek Park in Tomball.

Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Staff Photographer

“Used to, there were so many people you couldn’t even dance,” Dianne says as she sits at a picnic table on the edge of the dance floor, next to her husband Ronnie. She and Ronnie used to dance all the time, she says, her voice growing nostalgic at the thought of yesteryear.

Headline The annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo officially kicks off Monday and continues to March 17. To learn more about the rodeo, visit www.houstonchronicle.com /entertainment/rodeo.

Everything changed in 2015, when Ronnie had a stroke that moved slowly through his system over three days. He lost all mobility on his left side. No more dancing. No more dove hunting. And perhaps hardest of all: no more riding.

It’d be hard for Dianne and Ronnie to get through something like that on their own. But the riders of the Sam Houston Trail Ride are never, ever on their own.

If someone needs something done, they text Bruce, a skinny-legged Swiss Army knife of a man who says he’ll never run for another term as boss, but not-so-secretly loves his role. He begins drinking Mountain Dew in the morning, and doesn’t stop making that caffeine work overtime until past midnight, picking up loose ends for anyone that asks. In one half-hour period, midweek, he counts 18 phone calls. It’d be enough to make most people’s head spin. But Bruce remains as relaxed as his drawl.

On Thursday morning, the subdivisions give way to strip malls, as the ride wades into the fringes of the city. It’s another soggy morning. Mist, mostly. And it’s a little warmer than Tuesday, but no better than 50 degrees. Still, they lumber along easily.

Until the crash.

It comes out of nowhere. No skid or screeching first. Just a loud bang that that sucks the saliva from your mouth, followed by a chorus of “whoas,” that begins at the back of the pack and pushes to the front like a game of telephone on uppers.

Someone in the back of the wagon yells, “What in the —”

Then the Hummer comes into view, with its freshly mangled passenger-side headlight, just behind Taylor’s twin brother Tucker, upon his horse Spud, who has blood smeared on his rump.

Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

“I just got hit by a car,” Tucker says, his eyes glazed and wide. Stunned. Yes, he knows what his dad says: Riding in Houston is different. It’s dangerous. But he never could have guessed that just 20 minutes after crossing beneath the Grand Parkway, he’d be hit.

In decades of collective Sam Houston memory, no one can recall an incident like this: Trail riders who saw the collision say the driver was ignoring riders’ instructions to leave an open lane between the horses and traffic. He flipped a wagon driver the bird when he was told to scoot over, they said. And then, boom.

Police came to question the driver. A trailer arrived to take Spud to the vet. Tucker hopped in a truck, shaken but unhurt.

“Road rage,” says Becky Rogers. Like she’s known forever that it was destined to happen sooner or later.

“You know, I’ve been doing this for 45 years. And I have enjoyed every single day,” Bruce says later that night, when the ride pulls into camp, hours behind schedule. “Until today.”

The vet sends word that Spud is just bruised. Still, the crash cast a pall over the whole ride - and Bruce is still struggling to get out of the funk when he had the last of the day’s problem’s solved, well after midnight.

But come Friday morning, the ride rebounds.

As the riders pass Katherine Smith Elementary School, they’re greeted by students waving wildly at the horses and wagons. Houston loves a party. And today’s Go Texan Day: The one day a year when little, big-city kids dressed in boots and plastic cowboy hats see a blast from the past and squeal to their teachers, “I want to be a cowboy.”

Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

Their enthusiasm is contagious. By the time the ride reaches Memorial Park for camp, just about everyone’s smiling, waving, and four-clapping to “Deep in the heart of Texas.”

This energy right here could be the highlight of the whole ride. But then it gets even better.

For the first time in at least 15 years, Sam Houston wins the award for best trail ride in its size division. There are screams. Tears. Hugs.

Needless to say, the campfire where the riders routinely sit around “and listen to some lies” blazes well past midnight. Plans to be up at dawn on Saturday to prepare for the big parade with all the other trail rides go to seed.

“I gotta find my horse,” Kay laughs at 7:30 a.m., about a half hour before Sam Houston is supposed to take its place in line for the slow march to downtown.

Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

She stops to knock on Keith’s trailer, from which nary a pulse has been detected this morning. “Keith!” She yells. “You got 20 minutes!”

He’s out, squinting and speechless in five. He walks around his truck, where a pair of soaking wet Wranglers is dangling off the tailgate after someone got dumped in a water trough last night. Then he hitches the Percherons to the wagon. He decides that all the coolers and chairs - still askew around the fire circle - can wait until after the parade to be packed up.

Everyone loads into the wagons by a few minutes after 8 a.m., making use of the two-plus hour stop-and-go slog into downtown to perk up slowly.

“We used to be jumping and hooting and hollering,” Bruce’s wife Glenda says when the group reaches downtown, where crowds wave at the wagon and gear up for the rodeo, which begins Monday. “Now it’s just…”

She lets her thought fade into the air and breathes deeply, as she looks out the sides of Wagon No. 9, thinking about all those years when Sam Houston had hundreds of riders. For a moment, she looks lost.

But then the wagon turns a corner, down a long street where the sun shines in through the tall buildings. The crowds grow denser.

Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

Taylor and Alexis, both exhausted from a week of schoolwork and saddling, have stepped onto the back step of the wagon. With one hand on a rail, they each lean as far out of the wagon as their arms will let them. They wave their free hands like they’re trying to flag down a rescue helicopter, and yell so loud that Alexis’s voice begins cracking.

Glenda turns around and watches them — the picture of old and new in their hats, with skyscrapers at their back — and she smiles tenderly, knowing this ride still has a future.

maggie.gordon@chron.com

Twitter.com/MagEGordon