Textiles and Nonwovens
The cattle ranchers learned of this by the second week of October. Ingred had kept herself aloof all autumn, walking her flock and working on her cabin in the evenings. He had finished the south face and much of the west face, and the wool was running low. Leene would need at least another 14 kilos to complete the job. The wool damaged by his 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 of 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.
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Textiles and Nonwovens
“You’re the Norwegian,” she said. “The one who lines the cabin with sheep dung.”
Ingred tied his horse. “Wool, not manure.”
“Same thing.”
Brennan stepped away from the post and approached. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a weather-beaten face and a powerful voice. People in the street had stopped to watch.
“I heard you’re buying scrap wool. Are you going to resell it to someone even stupider than you?”
“I plan to use it for insulation.”
Brennan smiled, but without any 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 again.” She moved even 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 200 dead sheep rotting in Musselshell 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 eyes of the city on 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.”
She left.
Ingred entered the shop. Elias Croft was behind the counter and had heard everything.
“You’re not wrong,” Croft said softly. “About the cold.”
Ingred gathered his supplies and didn’t answer.
By late October, the walls were finished. Every interior surface of the cabin, 330 square feet of boards, cracks, and joints, was now covered with a 3-inch-thick layer of compressed raw wool. Ingred had used 60 pounds of wool, nailed, tucked, and compacted into every crevice. The smell had faded somewhat as the lanolin oxidized, but the cabin still reeked of the strong, animal odor of a shearing barn. He had also lined the ceiling: another 12 square feet, another 12 pounds of wool. The roof still leaked in three places, but now the drops were falling on the wool, which absorbed the moisture and held it in place without allowing it to drip further. Textiles and Nonwovens
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