Whoopee!

. . . CALAMITY JANE AND THE LADY WILDCATS--Duncan Aikman--Henry Holt ($3). Ladies a la carte make up this racy repast served on a cloth flamboyantly patterned with genuine early day Westernism. Calamity Jane forms the piece de resistance--"comfortable, jovial, uncomplaining, baudily at ease in her blowsy element," Calam' reels through 51 years of life with husky frontiersmen, bullwhackers, soldiers, miners, gathered from the far reaches of Virginia City, Deadwood Gulch, Cheyenne, the Black Hills--an untutored rebel against the codes, with the creed of "to hell with the consequences" to guide her in a life rumbling with undertones of violence and defiance. Cattle Kate, Belle Starr, Lola Montez, Pearl Hart, Mme. Moustache, Poker Alice, Kitty the Schemer, and other lady wildcats of this astounding period in American history are highly spiced side dishes to the Calamity Jane main course. Author Aikman has garnished facts with picturesque phraseology, has neatly dedicated his volume "with some hesitation and infinite deference to various uncontrollable ladies."