It's Saturday night at Cattails bar on Main Street. A fracker from Utah sings "Free Bird," karaoke-style. Oil-field workers clink shot glasses. And concrete mixer driver Michelle Bean strokes her cue at the pool table, starting another game of 8-ball with her housemate, dump truck driver Sonya Adams.

Nothing goes in.

"That shot was like a woman," she says. "All bust, no balls."

Bean, 41, sips Crown Royal and Red Bull to stay alert after working nearly 90 hours this week, pouring concrete for roads, sidewalks and oil pads. Sunday is her day off. She came out to the Bakken in February, fleeing a bad breakup in the woodsy country near Leavenworth, Wash.

"I miss the trees," she says. "And the guys to girls ratio is a little unbalanced."

Being female in the North Dakota oil fields, Bean and Adams say, isn't as bad as the horror stories they hear about leers at the Wal-Mart and harassment around every corner. Unofficial counts say there are 10 men for every woman working in western North Dakota.

"It's not too bad because everyone kind of caters to you," Bean says. "Nobody's messed with me and it's all been respectful."

Knife River Corp., a 5,000-employee construction giant based in Bismarck, provides the women with a five-bedroom house they share with another truck driving woman named Betty.

They earn $24 an hour plus a $50 per diem and Knife River deducts $600 a month for the housing.

Adams, 40, left a divorce and 9-year-old son back in southern Idaho. Her parents, Richard and Tina Yelton, have come up from Arizona. Her dad is her truck boss and her mom drives a 10-wheel end dump truck just like she does.

"Women are definitely outnumbered," she says, but even that has improved from when she arrived two years ago. "They're learning we work just as hard and do just as a good a job."