CATTLE ANNIE AND LITTLE BRITCHES

. . . the dream we had, the dream of badmen, hard riding, lying low and living high. Which we did, oh, how we did it. But it is gone now, all its glory and noise is brushed aside as if it never happened."" So pines Little Britches, writing her memoirs in Boston, after having been captured while riding with the Doolin-Dalton gang on its bank robbery escapades in Oklahoma and Arkansas in the 1890s. Britches is Jennie Stevens, fourteen, who is led into her life of crime by Cattle Annie McDougal, fifteen, an omnivorous reader of Ned Buntline ""documentaries"" on badmen. Badmen were heroes and giants in those days and were made welcome while they spent their hard-robbed cash. The girls are ready to give their all when they join the gang; Britches falls for Bittercreek Newcomb while Annie goes for Bill Dalton, although it's Pinkerton man Bill Tilghman who deflowers her. The girls become real desperados, their voices tough and mechanical during a bank job, but we learn that these doomed thieves are--as Annie eulogizes over Bill Doolin--""wild and generous, with as much bad as good in him. . . he was great because he played out all the bad and all the good, no matter where the chips fell."" A Tatum O'Neal natural, a charmer full of big Ozark suns going down and piney-wood smells, and enough to make folksy hearts bulge and go sad.