‘ And it happened that when she came to him, she moved him to ask of her father a field, and she lighted from her ass, and Caleb said to her, “What is it you want?” And she said to him, “Give me a blessing, for you have set me in the land of the Negeb. Give me also springs of water.” And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the nether springs.'
The dowry Othniel requested, at her suggestion, was land, and when his wife discovered where this was, in the Negeb, she lighted from her ass (a gesture of maidenly courtesy and submission - compare Genesis 24:64) and approached her father to ensure good water supplies, which were necessary in that region, by asking for permanent springs, which he gave her as a wedding gift. The word translated alighted may mean ‘clap one's hands', a signal to a servant to be helped down.
This account is paralleled in Judges 1:11-15. The latter may have been copied from here, but more probably both were taken from an early record made of the wars in Canaan similar to ‘the book of the wars of YHWH' (Numbers 21:14). For such were looked on as religious events and as covenant documents confirming the covenant, not just as history.