Suddenly, from around the right of the knoll, came the sharp yelp of a dog as Tillie’s leader, rounding the ridge, caught scent and sight of living meat ahead. The caribou stopped dead. Then bedlam broke loose as the dogs saw what was before them. And the caribou, trembling at the wolf-yells of the dogs, broke into their swift, lumbering run and came streaking straight past Reivers at fifty yards’ distance. Reivers waited until the maddened beasts were running four deep before him. Then the slaughter began. No need to watch the sights here. The crash of shot upon shot followed as quickly as he could pump the lever. There were ten shots in each rifle, and he fired them all before the herd was out of range. Then only the hideous yelps of the maddened dogs tore the morning quiet. A dozen caribou, some dead, some kicking, some trying to crawl away, were scattered over the snow, and Reivers nodded and knew that his hold on Tillie’s people was complete. The dogs were on the first caribou now, snarling, yelping, fighting, eating, for the time being as wild and savage as any of their wolf forebears. Tillie, spilled from the sledge in the first mad rush of the team, came waddling up to Reivers and bowed down before him humbly. “Snow-Burner, I know you are only a man, because I alone of my people have seen you among other white men,” she said. “Yet you are more than other men. Snow-Burner, I have lived among white people and know that the talk of spirits is only for children. But how knew you that the caribou were here?” “The meat is there,” said Reivers, pointing at his kill. “Your work is to take care of it. The axe is on the sledge. Cut off as many saddles and hind-quarters as the dogs can drag back to camp. The rest we will cache here. To your work. Do not ask questions.” He reloaded and put the wounded animals out of their misery, each with a shot through the head, and sat down and watched her as she slaved at her butcher’s task. Tillie had lived among white people, had been to the white man’s school even, but Reivers knew he would slacken his hold on her if he demeaned himself by assisting her in her toil. When the dogs had stayed their hunger he leaped into their midst with clubbed rifle and knocked them yelping away from their prey. When they turned and attacked him he coolly struck and kicked till they had enough. Then with the driving whip he beat them till they lay flat in the snow and whined for mercy. By the time Tillie had the sledge loaded and the rest of the kill cached under a huge heap of snow, it was noon, and the dogs started back with their heavy load, open-mouthed and panting, their excitement divided between fear of the man who had mastered them and the odour of fresh blood that reeked in their avid nostrils. CHAPTER XXIX—THE WHITE MAN’S WILL That night in the camp at the river bend the Indians feasted ravenously, and Reivers, sitting in Tillie’s place as new-made chief, looked on without smiling.