“What are you doing?” asked Thomas.
“Cover the walls with wool.”
“With the fleece?”
Ingred hammered another nail into the mass of fibers, securing it to the boards. “Lanolin repels moisture. The corrugation traps air. Air doesn’t conduct heat. Cold can’t get through.”
Thomas entered. He touched the wall where she had already covered a section, running his fingers over the compressed wool. It was thick and elastic, and his fingers remained greasy.
“This will attract vermin,” he said. “Mice, moths, anything that eats wool.”
“Lanolin also repels them. Insects don’t like the taste.”
“You don’t know.”
“I know my grandmother lined the walls this way. I know Mongolian shepherds have been using felt insulation for 3,000 years. I know newspaper in these spaces is useless, and the wood I can afford will last eight weeks, and winter lasts four months.”
Thomas was silent for a moment. He looked at the walls, at the crack where daylight still filtered through, at the pile of damaged wool waiting to be reattached.
“You’re using scrap wool,” he said. “Are the Grandes giving it to you?”
“They told me to burn it. No merchant will buy it because it’s worthless.”
“Because they don’t know how much it’s worth.”
Thomas shook his head. He was a practical man, cautious in the way six Montana winters had taught him to be cautious.
“Ingrid, I’ve seen huts collapse. I’ve seen shepherds freeze to death. This isn’t Norway. This isn’t the Mongolian steppe. You don’t understand the cold here yet. When January comes, when the temperature drops to -40 degrees, the stove will stay on all day and ice will still form in the water bucket. Wool can’t keep out such cold.”
“It can slow it down.”
“That’s not enough. You’re wasting your time. You should chop wood. You should find a family to spend the winter with. You should be—”
“What should I do?” Ingrid turned to him, hammer still in hand. “Find a husband? Give up my claim? Go back to Norway and admit I’ve failed?”
He shook his head.
“I have 240 sheep. I have this cabin. I have two cords of wood and 40 pounds of wool. I’ll line these walls and burn the wood slowly and survive the winter. If I’m wrong, I’ll die and it won’t matter. If I’m right…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. There was no need.
Thomas stood there for a long time, watching her. Then he nodded once and headed for the door.
“I hope you’re right,” he said. “I’ll contact you in November. If you’re still alive, maybe I’ll ask you how.”
He left. Ingred turned to the wall and hammered in another nail. The calendar read September 27th. The first hard frost was expected in three weeks.
The cattle ranchers learned of it by the second week of October. Ingred had been keeping herself out of the way all autumn, walking her flock and working on her cabin in the evenings. She had finished the south face and much of the west face, and the wool was running low. Leene would need at least another 30 pounds to complete the job. The wool damaged by her own shearing wouldn’t be enough.
On October 15th, she went to the Grande Ranch to ask Karen about purchasing more scrap wool. Karen quoted her 40 cents for 20 pounds, the market price for material that would otherwise be discarded. Ingred could barely afford it. But when she returned to White Sulphur Springs to pick up her monthly supply, Silas Brennan was waiting for her outside the store.
Brennan raised cattle on the pastures south of the Judith Mountains. He was one of the big ranchers, with 3,000 head and a team of 12, and he had made his opinion on sheep known to everyone in Meagher County. Sheep destroyed pastures. Sheep stank. Sheep attracted wolves, which then attacked the cattle. And the sheep ranchers were worse than the sheep themselves: dirty, foreign, too poor to matter, and too stubborn to leave.
She leaned against the tethering post as Ingred dismounted, watching her with unblinking eyes.
“You’re the Norwegian,” she said. “The one who lines the cabin with sheep dung.”
Ingred tied his horse. “Wool, not manure.”
“The same thing.”
Brennan stepped away from the pole and approached. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a windswept face and a powerful voice. People in the street had stopped to watch.
“I heard you’re buying scrap wool. Are you planning on reselling it to someone even more stupid than you?”
“I plan to use it as insulation.”
Brennan smiled, but there was no trace of warmth. “You know what happens when a sheep farm fails here? The land recovers. The grass grows back. The pasture becomes available for the cattle.” She leaned closer. “You know what I think? I think you’ll freeze to death in that shack of yours. And when spring comes, there will be two hundred dead sheep rotting in Musselshell’s pasture, and the Grandes will finally understand what the rest of us already know. This isn’t sheep country. Never has been, and never will be.”
Ingred felt the city’s eyes upon her. She felt the weight of Brennan’s contempt. But underneath, she felt something even colder: the knowledge that maybe she was right.
“See you in the spring,” she said.
Brennan laughed. “No, you won’t.”
He left.
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