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Excerpt from No Life for a Lady

Originally published in 1941

In the 1800s cattle drives were considered men's work. But that didn't mean that women didn't play an important role in the cattle boom of the late nineteenth century. In fact, some of the infamous female figures in the West were as romanticized as their male counterparts. Horse thief and cattle rustler Belle Starr was widely known as the female Jesse James, and Calamity Jane was as celebrated as Wild Bill Hickok for her exploits with a gun. In the rowdy cattle towns that popped up across Kansas, dance hall girls and prostitutes were very colorful figures. However, most women—like most cowboys—led more ordinary lives than the legends indicate. Ranchers' wives worked alongside their husbands to build the ranches that were the bases for cattle drives. On small farms and ranches in the Far West, women often had to do much of the same work as...