SPRINGDALE, Ark. — As the crowd floods through the gates at the Rodeo of the Ozarks under the foreboding summer sky, Bill Ziegler sits in the quiet, dim confines of a large trailer. Inside are all the amenities of a high school football team's training room: padded tables, various supplies, enough athletic tape to mummify a bareback rider.

"It's not quite as extravagant as a college training room," Ziegler says, "but we have pretty much everything we need here, and we can do a lot for the cowboys."

Formerly a longtime trainer for baseball's Texas Rangers, Ziegler is part of the Justin Sportsmedicine Team of doctors, therapists and trainers who attend about 130 rodeos a year. Named for its sponsor, Justin Boots, the team and its four mobile units offer cowboys free medical supplies, advice and treatment.

It's an odd relationship, in a way, because while few athletes are more likely to need medical attention than cowboys, they also are among athletes who can least afford to slow down to attend to injuries. Most don't have anything like guaranteed money, either with contracts or appearance fees. If they don't ride, they won't get paid. And if they do ride, they're almost sure to get hurt, at some point.

"You've got to be tough to rodeo, if you're not, you won't last long," Ziegler says. "It's not the professional sports where you fly everywhere and have people take care of your travel and things like that. If you're going to rodeo for a living, you've got to make the rodeos wherever they are.

"I think they appreciate the program. We try to help them any way we can."

Hearing this, a saddle bronc rider named Ty Atchison who has been stretching in the corner pipes up. "We wouldn't survive without them," he says. "Seriously. You got to a hundred-plus rodeos a year, with bumps, bruises and injuries. These guys put us back together."

According to the Justin Sportsmedicine Team's figures, it has treated more than 112,000 cowboys at more than 11,000 rodeos — to the tune of $23 million worth of medical attention. It claims to have dispensed enough athletic tape — 2,665 miles of the stuff — to stretch from Boise to Boston.

(Justin Boots also sponsors, with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, a charity to provide for catastrophically injured cowboys, called the Justin Cowboys Crisis Fund, which has disbursed more than $4 million over the past 20 years to injured cowboys.)

The Sportsmedicine Team dates to 1981, when a Dallas Cowboys team doctor named J. Pat Evans approached Justin Boots about offering free treatment to cowboys with a lowercase "c." Evans began following the sport once Cowboys fullback (and cowboy) Walt Garrison invited him to an event in Dallas.

"Dr. Evans said back before then, these cowboys had nothing," Ziegler says. "I guarantee you there was a lot of broken bones that never even got checked."

Ziegler, who was then with the Rangers, worked as a trainer when the baseball off-season would allow. After 22 years with the Rangers, he joined the rodeo staff full-time in 1991.

When asked how baseball players and cowboys handle pain and injury, Ziegler doesn't mince words. "I don't know any other athlete that compares to a rodeo cowboy," he says. "There are a few wimps in baseball, and there are some guys that play hurt. In rodeo, if you can't perform with pain, you can't ride."

Before it comes to that, trainers teach cowboys exercises they can do on the road — with a chair, perhaps, or a length of surgical tubing — as preventative measures against injury. But the competitors are still walking triage wards at times. Bareback riders hurt their elbows, shoulders, groins and backs. Steer wrestlers are prone to damaging their ankles and knees on dismounts. Bull riders strain their groins gripping the bucking roughstock.

Once a rider pulls a groin muscle, the best remedy is rest. Which is, by cruel coincidence, the last thing he wants to do.

"You try to reason with them," Ziegler says. "This program's been around long enough that they will listen. You explain to them that if they miss tonight, it'll help them so they won't have to miss three down the road."

The toughest cowboy Ziegler ever saw also happened to be the best: Ty Murray, the seven-time PRCA all-around champion. The trainer marvels that Murray would ride bulls, saddle broncs and bareback  essentially competing in three rodeos every night he rode.

Among cowboys, though, determination is rarely in short supply. Ziegler recalls stories of Larry Mahan having a cast outfitted with spurs, so he could keep riding even with a bum leg.

"Of course, most of these guys, if they are hurt, you have to suck it up for eight seconds, which doesn't seem that long," the trainer says. "But there was a kid recently who had broken some ribs. He was able to suck it up. We racked him and strapped him  sometimes that helps, sometimes it makes it feel worse. And for eight seconds he sucked it up and when he came off, he just fell over.

"Eight seconds with broken ribs riding a bull — it's crazy, but I've seen it done."

With that mentality driving the athletes, there are obvious limits to what the crew can accomplish. Bumps and bruises are one thing, but it's entirely another when a cowboy gets kicked in the head, as one named Bo Keylon did the night before at the Rodeo of the Ozarks. The rider told Ziegler he was fine, he was fine, but when Ziegler tilted the rider's hat back, the trainer could see a dent above the young man's eye that suggested a depressed fracture.

"He should have gone in an ambulance, but he refused," Ziegler says. Instead, his mother drove him to the hospital. Typical, really. No one likes to end a ride by being hoisted into an ambulance.

"We know most of the guys, and for them, they like to see a familiar face," Ziegler says. "I've seen it almost come to blows when the ambulance crews try to get them on a backboard. It can get a little hairy at times. It's a macho thing. They don't want to get carried out. If you're carried out, it means you failed, you're hurt — everything went bad."

"Better to crawl out than to get carried," the saddle bronc rider Atchison interjects.

When the cowboy gets ready to leave the trailer, Ziegler asks him which horse he drew: "Who do you have tonight?"

"Crow Webb," Atchison says. "I think she's gonna be pretty good."

"Get the money," the trainer says.

"Yes, sir," the cowboy replies.

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