Rather slapdash, easy, open-mannered account of a woman government trapper, the first of her sex to take on what is definitely ""no job for a lady"". Eloping at 16, with a man who was a trapper, she learned to love the Texas open range through him. He tried, for a time, to return to the city, for the sake of his young wife and child, but after a year or so, they decided to go back to the hard life that meant so much to him. Bess, helping, sometimes pinch-hitting, grew to like it, and when offered a job, she took it. She knew fear -- and conquered it; she went after lion, polecat, coyote, wild hog, and the omnipresent rattlers. And she made a success of it. Interesting and novel approach to rough, dangerous living -- but not literature.