There have been renunciations and renunciations.  But, in its essence, renunciation is ever the same.  And the paradox¹ of it is, that men and women forego the dearest thing in the world for something dearer.  It was never otherwise.  Thus it was when Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof.  The firstlings and the fat thereof were to him the dearest things in the world; yet he gave them over that he might be on good terms with God.  So it was with Abraham when he prepared to offer up his son Isaac on a stone.  Isaac was very dear to him; but God, in incomprehensible ways, was yet dearer.  It may be that Abraham feared the Lord.  But whether that be true or not it has since been determined² by a few billion people that he loved the Lord and desired to serve him.  
And since it has been determined that love is service, and since to renounce³ is to serve, then Jees Uck, who was merely a woman of a swart-skinned breed, loved with a great love.  She was unversed in history, having learned to read only the signs of weather and of game; so she had never heard of Abel nor of Abraham; nor, having escaped the good sisters at Holy Cross, had she been told the story of Ruth, the Moabitess, who renounced⁶ her very God for the sake of a stranger woman from a strange land.  Jees Uck had learned only one way of renouncing⁷, and that was with a club as the dynamic factor, in much the same manner as a dog is made to renounce a stolen marrow-bone.  Yet, when the time came, she proved herself capable of rising to the height of the fair-faced royal races and of renouncing in right regal fashion.
 
So this is the story of Jees Uck, which is also the story of Neil Bonner, and Kitty Bonner, and a couple of Neil Bonner’s progeny⁸.  Jees Uck was of a swart-skinned breed, it is true, but she was not an Indian; nor was she an Eskimo; nor even an Innuit.  Going backward into mouth tradition, there appears the figure of one Skolkz, a Toyaat Indian of the Yukon, who journeyed down in his youth to the Great Delta⁹ where dwell the Innuits, and where he foregathered with a woman remembered as Olillie.  Now the woman Olillie had been bred from an Eskimo mother by an Innuit man.  And from Skolkz and Olillie came Halie, who was one-half Toyaat Indian, one-quarter Innuit, and one-quarter Eskimo.  And Halie was the grandmother of Jees Uck.
 
Now Halie, in whom three stocks had been bastardized, who cherished no prejudice against further admixture, mated with a Russian fur trader called Shpack, also known in his time as the Big Fat.  Shpack is herein classed Russian for lack of a more adequate term; for Shpack’s father, a Slavonic convict from the Lower Provinces, had escaped from the quicksilver mines into Northern Siberia, where he knew Zimba, who was a woman of the Deer People and who became the mother of Shpack, who became the grandfather of Jees Uck.
 
Now had not Shpack been captured in his boyhood by the Sea People, who fringe the rim¹⁰ of the Arctic Sea with their misery¹¹, he would not have become the grandfather of Jees Uck and there would be no story at all.  But he was captured by the Sea People, from whom he escaped to Kamchatka, and thence, on a Norwegian whale-ship, to the Baltic.  Not long after that he turned up in St. Petersburg, and the years were not many till he went drifting east over the same weary road his father had measured with blood and groans¹² a half-century before.  But Shpack was a free man, in the employ of the great Russian Fur Company.  And in that employ he fared farther and farther east, until he crossed Bering Sea into Russian America; and at Pastolik, which is hard by the Great Delta of the Yukon, became the husband of Halie, who was the grandmother of Jees Uck.  Out of this union came the woman-child, Tukesan.
 
Shpack, under the orders of the Company, made a canoe voyage of a few hundred miles up the Yukon to the post of Nulato.  With him he took Halie and the babe Tukesan.  This was in 1850, and in 1850 it was that the river Indians fell upon Nulato and wiped it from the face of the earth.  And that was the end of Shpack and Halie.  On that terrible night Tukesan disappeared.  To this day the Toyaats aver¹³ they had no hand in the trouble; but, be that as it may, the fact remains¹⁴ that the babe Tukesan grew up among them.
 
Tukesan was married successively to two Toyaat brothers, to both of whom she was barren.  Because of this, other women shook their heads, and no third Toyaat man could be found to dare matrimony with the childless widow.  But at this time, many hundred miles above, at Fort Yukon, was a man, Spike¹⁵ O’Brien.  Fort Yukon was a Hudson Bay Company post, and Spike O’Brien one of the Company’s servants.  He was a good servant, but he achieved an opinion that the service was bad, and in the course of time vindicated¹⁶ that opinion by deserting.  It was a year’s journey, by the chain of posts, back to York Factory on Hudson’s Bay.  Further, being Company posts, he knew he could not evade¹⁷ the Company’s clutches.  Nothing retained but to go down the Yukon.  It was true no white man had ever gone down the Yukon, and no white man knew whether the Yukon emptied into the Arctic Ocean or Bering Sea; but Spike O’Brien was a Celt, and the promise of danger was a lure¹⁸ he had ever followed.
 
A few weeks later, somewhat battered¹⁹, rather famished²⁰, and about dead with river-fever, he drove the nose of his canoe into the earth bank by the village of the Toyaats and promptly²¹ fainted away.  While getting his strength back, in the weeks that followed, he looked upon Tukesan and found her good.  Like the father of Shpack, who lived to a ripe old age among the Siberian Deer People, Spike O’Brien might have left his aged²² bones with the Toyaats.  But romance gripped his heart-strings and would not let him stay.  As he had journeyed from York Factory to Fort Yukon, so, first among men, might he journey from Fort Yukon to the sea and win the honour of being the first man to make the North-West Passage by land.  So he departed down the river, won the honour, and was unannaled and unsung.  In after years he ran a sailors’ boarding-house in San Francisco, where he became esteemed²³ a most remarkable²⁴ liar²⁵ by virtue²⁶ of the gospel truths he told.  But a child was born to Tukesan, who had been childless.  And this child was Jees Uck.  Her lineage has been traced at length to show that she was neither Indian, nor Eskimo, nor Innuit, nor much of anything else; also to show what waifs of the generations we are, all of us, and the strange meanderings of the seed from which we spring.
 
What with the vagrant²⁷ blood in her and the heritage compounded of many races, Jees Uck developed a wonderful young beauty.  Bizarre, perhaps, it was, and Oriental enough to puzzle any passing ethnologist.  A lithe²⁸ and slender grace characterized her.  Beyond a quickened lilt to the imagination, the contribution of the Celt was in no wise apparent.  It might possibly have put the warm blood under her skin, which made her face less swart and her body fairer; but that, in turn, might have come from Shpack, the Big Fat, who inherited the colour of his Slavonic father.  And, finally, she had great, blazing black eyes—the half-caste eye, round, full-orbed, and sensuous²⁹, which marks the collision of the dark races with the light.  Also, the white blood in her, combined with her knowledge that it was in her, made her, in a way, ambitious.  Otherwise by upbringing and in outlook on life, she was wholly and utterly³⁰ a Toyaat Indian.
 
One winter, when she was a young woman, Neil Bonner came into her life.  But he came into her life, as he had come into the country, somewhat reluctantly.  In fact, it was very much against his will, coming into the country.  Between a father who clipped coupons³¹ and cultivated roses, and a mother who loved the social round, Neil Bonner had gone rather wild.  He was not vicious, but a man with meat in his belly³² and without work in the world has to expend³³ his energy somehow, and Neil Bonner was such a man.  And he expended³⁴ his energy in such a fashion and to such extent that when the inevitable³⁵ climax³⁶ came, his father, Neil Bonner, senior, crawled out of his roses in a panic and looked on his son with a wondering eye.  Then he hied himself away to a crony of kindred pursuits, with whom he was wont³⁷ to confer over coupons and roses, and between the two the destiny of young Neil Bonner was made manifest.  He must go away, on probation³⁸, to live down his harmless follies³⁹ in order that he might live up to their own excellent standard.
 
This determined upon, and young Neil a little repentant⁴⁰ and a great deal ashamed, the rest was easy.  The cronies were heavy stockholders in the P. C. Company.  The P. C. Company owned fleets of river-steamers and ocean-going craft, and, in addition to farming the sea, exploited a hundred thousand square miles or so of the land that, on the maps of geographers⁴¹, usually occupies the white spaces.  So the P. C. Company sent young Neil Bonner north, where the white spaces are, to do its work and to learn to be good like his father.  “Five years of simplicity⁴², close to the soil and far from temptation, will make a man of him,” said old Neil Bonner, and forthwith crawled back among his roses.  Young Neil set his jaw⁴⁴, pitched his chin at the proper angle, and went to work.  As an underling he did his work well and gained the commendation of his superiors.  Not that he delighted in the work, but that it was the one thing that prevented him from going mad.
 
The first year he wished he was dead.  The second year he cursed God.  The third year he was divided between the two emotions, and in the confusion quarrelled with a man in authority.  He had the best of the quarrel, though the man in authority had the last word,—a word that sent Neil Bonner into an exile that made his old billet appear as paradise.  But he went without a whimper, for the North had succeeded in making him into a man.
 
Here and there, on the white spaces on the map, little circlets like the letter “o” are to be found, and, appended to these circlets, on one side or the other, are names such as “Fort Hamilton,” “Yanana Station,” “Twenty Mile,” thus leading one to imagine that the white spaces are plentifully⁴⁶ besprinkled with towns and villages.  But it is a vain imagining.  Twenty Mile, which is very like the rest of the posts, is a log building the size of a corner grocery with rooms to let up-stairs.  A long-legged cache on stilts⁴⁸ may be found in the back yard; also a couple of outhouses.  The back yard is unfenced, and extends to the sky-line and an unascertainable bit beyond.  There are no other houses in sight, though the Toyaats sometimes pitch a winter camp a mile or two down the Yukon.  And this is Twenty Mile, one tentacle⁵⁰ of the many-tentacled P. C. Company.  Here the agent, with an assistant, barters⁵¹ with the Indians for their furs, and does an erratic⁵² trade on a gold-dust basis with the wandering miners.  Here, also, the agent and his assistant yearn⁵³ all winter for the spring, and when the spring comes, camp blasphemously⁵⁴ on the roof while the Yukon washes out the establishment.  And here, also, in the fourth year of his sojourn⁵⁵ in the land, came Neil Bonner to take charge.
 
He had displaced no agent; for the man that previously⁵⁶ ran the post had made away with himself; “because of the rigours of the place,” said the assistant, who still remained; though the Toyaats, by their fires, had another version.  The assistant was a shrunken-shouldered, hollow-chested man, with a cadaverous face and cavernous cheeks that his sparse⁵⁷ black beard could not hide.  He coughed much, as though consumption gripped his lungs, while his eyes had that mad, fevered light common to consumptives in the last stage.  Pentley was his name—Amos Pentley—and Bonner did not like him, though he felt a pity for the forlorn and hopeless devil.  They did not get along together, these two men who, of all men, should have been on good terms in the face of the cold and silence and darkness of the long winter.
 
In the end, Bonner concluded that Amos was partly demented, and left him alone, doing all the work himself except the cooking.  Even then, Amos had nothing but bitter looks and an undisguised hatred⁵⁸ for him.  This was a great loss to Bonner; for the smiling face of one of his own kind, the cheery word, the sympathy of comradeship shared with misfortune—these things meant much; and the winter was yet young when he began to realize the added reasons, with such an assistant, that the previous agent had found to impel⁵⁹ his own hand against his life.
 
It was very lonely at Twenty Mile.  The bleak⁶⁰ vastness stretched away on every side to the horizon.  The snow, which was really frost, flung its mantle⁶¹ over the land and buried everything in the silence of death.  For days it was clear and cold, the thermometer steadily⁶² recording⁶³ forty to fifty degrees below zero.  Then a change came over the face of things.  What little moisture had oozed⁶⁴ into the atmosphere gathered into dull grey, formless clouds; it became quite warm, the thermometer rising to twenty below; and the moisture fell out of the sky in hard frost-granules that hissed⁶⁵ like dry sugar or driving sand when kicked underfoot.  After that it became clear and cold again, until enough moisture had gathered to blanket the earth from the cold of outer space.  That was all.  Nothing happened.  No storms, no churning waters and threshing forests, nothing but the machine-like precipitation of accumulated moisture.  Possibly the most notable thing that occurred through the weary weeks was the gliding⁶⁶ of the temperature up to the unprecedented⁶⁷ height of fifteen below.  To atone⁶⁸ for this, outer space smote⁶⁹ the earth with its cold till the mercury froze and the spirit thermometer remained more than seventy below for a fortnight, when it burst.  There was no telling how much colder it was after that.  Another occurrence, monotonous⁷⁰ in its regularity⁷¹, was the lengthening⁷² of the nights, till day became a mere⁴ blink of light between the darkness.
 
Neil Bonner was a social animal.  The very follies for which he was doing penance⁷³ had been bred of his excessive sociability⁷⁴.  And here, in the fourth year of his exile, he found himself in company—which were to travesty⁷⁵ the word—with a morose⁷⁶ and speechless creature in whose sombre eyes smouldered a hatred as bitter as it was unwarranted.  And Bonner, to whom speech and fellowship were as the breath of life, went about as a ghost might go, tantalized⁷⁷ by the gregarious⁷⁸ revelries of some former life.  In the day his lips were compressed, his face stern; but in the night he clenched⁷⁹ his hands, rolled about in his blankets, and cried aloud like a little child.  And he would remember a certain man in authority and curse him through the long hours.  Also, he cursed God.  But God understands.  He cannot find it in his heart to blame weak mortals who blaspheme in Alaska.
 
And here, to the post of Twenty Mile, came Jees Uck, to trade for flour and bacon, and beads⁸⁰, and bright scarlet⁸¹ cloths for her fancy work.  And further, and unwittingly, she came to the post of Twenty Mile to make a lonely man more lonely, make him reach out empty arms in his sleep.  For Neil Bonner was only a man.  When she first came into the store, he looked at her long, as a thirsty man may look at a flowing well.  And she, with the heritage bequeathed her by Spike O’Brien, imagined daringly and smiled up into his eyes, not as the swart-skinned peoples should smile at the royal races, but as a woman smiles at a man.  The thing was inevitable; only, he did not see it, and fought against her as fiercely and passionately⁸² as he was drawn⁸³ towards her.  And she?  She was Jees Uck, by upbringing wholly and utterly a Toyaat Indian woman.
 
She came often to the post to trade.  And often she sat by the big wood stove and chatted in broken English with Neil Bonner.  And he came to look for her coming; and on the days she did not come he was worried and restless.  Sometimes he stopped to think, and then she was met coldly, with a resolve that perplexed⁸⁴ and piqued⁸⁵ her, and which, she was convinced, was not sincere.  But more often he did not dare to think, and then all went well and there were smiles and laughter.  And Amos Pentley, gasping⁸⁶ like a stranded⁸⁷ catfish⁸⁸, his hollow cough a-reek with the grave, looked upon it all and grinned.  He, who loved life, could not live, and it rankled⁸⁹ his soul that others should be able to live.  Wherefore he hated Bonner, who was so very much alive and into whose eyes sprang joy at the sight of Jees Uck.  As for Amos, the very thought of the girl was sufficient to send his blood pounding up into a hemorrhage.
 
Jees Uck, whose mind was simple, who thought elementally and was unused to weighing life in its subtler quantities, read Amos Pentley like a book.  She warned Bonner, openly and bluntly, in few words; but the complexities⁹⁰ of higher existence confused the situation to him, and he laughed at her evident anxiety.  To him, Amos was a poor, miserable⁹¹ devil, tottering⁹² desperately⁹³ into the grave.  And Bonner, who had suffered much, found it easy to forgive greatly.
 
But one morning, during a bitter snap, he got up from the breakfast-table and went into the store.  Jees Uck was already there, rosy⁹⁴ from the trail, to buy a sack of flour.  A few minutes later, he was out in the snow lashing⁹⁵ the flour on her sled.  As he bent⁹⁶ over he noticed a stiffness in his neck and felt a premonition of impending⁹⁷ physical misfortune.  And as he put the last half-hitch into the lashing and attempted to straighten up, a quick spasm⁹⁸ seized him and he sank into the snow.  Tense and quivering, head jerked back, limbs extended, back arched and mouth twisted and distorted, he appeared as though being racked limb from limb.  Without cry or sound, Jees Uck was in the snow beside him; but he clutched both her wrists spasmodically, and as long as the convulsion endured she was helpless.  In a few moments the spasm relaxed and he was left weak and fainting, his forehead beaded with sweat, and his lips flecked with foam⁹⁹.
 
“Quick!” he muttered, in a strange, hoarse¹⁰⁰ voice.  “Quick!  Inside!”
 
He started to crawl on hands and knees, but she raised him up, and, supported by her young arm, he made faster progress.  As he entered the store the spasm seized him again, and his body writhed¹⁰¹ irresistibly¹⁰³ away from her and rolled and curled on the floor.  Amos Pentley came and looked on with curious eyes.
 
“Oh, Amos!” she cried in an agony of apprehension¹⁰⁴ and helplessness, “him die, you think?”  But Amos shrugged¹⁰⁵ his shoulders and continued to look on.
 
Bonner’s body went slack, the tense muscles easing down and an expression of relief coming into his face.  “Quick!” he gritted¹⁰⁶ between his teeth, his mouth twisting with the on-coming of the next spasm and with his effort to control it.  “Quick, Jees Uck!  The medicine!  Never mind!  Drag me!”
 
She knew where the medicine-chest stood, at the rear of the room beyond the stove, and thither¹⁰⁷, by the legs, she dragged the struggling man.  As the spasm passed he began, very faint and very sick, to overhaul¹⁰⁸ the chest.  He had seen dogs die exhibiting symptoms similar to his own, and he knew what should be done.  He held up a vial of chloral hydrate, but his fingers were too weak and nerveless to draw the cork¹⁰⁹.  This Jees Uck did for him, while he was plunged¹¹⁰ into another convulsion.  As he came out of it he found the open bottle proffered¹¹¹ him, and looked into the great black eyes of the woman and read what men have always read in the Mate-woman’s eyes.  Taking a full dose of the stuff, he sank back until another spasm had passed.  Then he raised himself limply on his elbow.
 
“Listen, Jees Uck!” he said very slowly, as though aware of the necessity for haste and yet afraid to hasten.  “Do what I say.  Stay by my side, but do not touch me.  I must be very quiet, but you must not go away.”  His jaw began to set and his face to quiver and distort with the fore-running pangs¹¹², but he gulped¹¹³ and struggled to master them.  “Do not got away.  And do not let Amos go away.  Understand!  Amos must stay right here.”
 
She nodded her head, and he passed off into the first of many convulsions, which gradually diminished in force and frequency.  Jees Uck hung over him remembering his injunction and not daring to touch him.  Once Amos grew restless and made as though to go into the kitchen; but a quick blaze from her eyes quelled¹¹⁴ him, and after that, save for his laboured breathing and charnel cough, he was very quiet.
 
Bonner slept.  The blink of light that marked the day disappeared.  Amos, followed about by the woman’s eyes, lighted the kerosene¹¹⁵ lamps.  Evening came on.  Through the north window the heavens were emblazoned with an auroral¹¹⁶ display, which flamed and flared¹¹⁷ and died down into blackness.  Some time after that, Neil Bonner roused.  First he looked to see that Amos was still there, then smiled at Jees Uck and pulled himself up.  Every muscle was stiff and sore, and he smiled ruefully, pressing and prodding¹¹⁸ himself as if to ascertain⁴⁹ the extent of the ravage¹¹⁹.  Then his face went stern and businesslike.
 
“Jees Uck,” he said, “take a candle.  Go into the kitchen.  There is food on the table—biscuits and beans and bacon; also, coffee in the pot on the stove.  Bring it here on the counter.  Also, bring tumblers and water and whisky, which you will find on the top shelf of the locker¹²⁰.  Do not forget the whisky.”
 
Having swallowed a stiff glass of the whisky, he went carefully through the medicine chest, now and again putting aside, with definite purpose, certain bottles and vials.  Then he set to work on the food, attempting a crude analysis.  He had not been unused to the laboratory in his college days and was possessed¹²¹ of sufficient imagination to achieve results with his limited materials.  The condition of tetanus, which had marked his paroxysms, simplified matters, and he made but one test.  The coffee yielded nothing; nor did the beans.  To the biscuits he devoted¹²² the utmost care.  Amos, who knew nothing of chemistry, looked on with steady curiosity.  But Jees Uck, who had boundless¹²³ faith in the white man’s wisdom, and especially in Neil Bonner’s wisdom, and who not only knew nothing but knew that she knew nothing watched his face rather than his hands.
 
Step by step he eliminated possibilities, until he came to the final test.  He was using a thin medicine vial for a tube, and this he held between him and the light, watching the slow precipitation of a salt through the solution contained in the tube.  He said nothing, but he saw what he had expected to see.  And Jees Uck, her eyes riveted¹²⁴ on his face, saw something too,—something that made her spring like a tigress upon Amos, and with splendid suppleness¹²⁵ and strength bend his body back across her knee.  Her knife was out of its sheaf and uplifted, glinting in the lamplight.  Amos was snarling¹²⁶; but Bonner intervened ere the blade could fall.
 
“That’s a good girl, Jees Uck.  But never mind.  Let him go!”
 
She dropped the man obediently, though with protest writ¹⁰² large on her face; and his body thudded to the floor.  Bonner nudged him with his moccasined foot.
 
“Get up, Amos!” he commanded.  “You’ve got to pack an outfit¹²⁷ yet to-night and hit the trail.”
 
“You don’t mean to say—” Amos blurted¹²⁸ savagely¹³⁰.
 
“I mean to say that you tried to kill me,” Neil went on in cold, even tones.  “I mean to say that you killed Birdsall, for all the Company believes he killed himself.  You used strychnine in my case.  God knows with what you fixed¹³¹ him.  Now I can’t hang you.  You’re too near dead as it is.  But Twenty Mile is too small for the pair of us, and you’ve got to mush.  It’s two hundred miles to Holy Cross.  You can make it if you’re careful not to over-exert.  I’ll give you grub, a sled, and three dogs.  You’ll be as safe as if you were in jail, for you can’t get out of the country.  And I’ll give you one chance.  You’re almost dead.  Very well.  I shall send no word to the Company until the spring.  In the meantime, the thing for you to do is to die.  Now mush!”
 
“You go to bed!” Jees Uck insisted, when Amos had churned away into the night towards Holy Cross.  “You sick man yet, Neil.”
 
“And you’re a good girl, Jees Uck,” he answered.  “And here’s my hand on it.  But you must go home.”
 
“You don’t like me,” she said simply.
 
He smiled, helped her on with her parka, and led her to the door.  “Only too well, Jees Uck,” he said softly; “only too well.”
 
After that the pall¹³² of the Arctic night fell deeper and blacker on the land.  Neil Bonner discovered that he had failed to put proper valuation upon even the sullen¹³³ face of the murderous and death-stricken Amos.  It became very lonely at Twenty Mile.  “For the love of God, Prentiss, send me a man,” he wrote to the agent at Fort Hamilton, three hundred miles up river.  Six weeks later the Indian messenger brought back a reply.  It was characteristic: “Hell.  Both feet frozen.  Need him myself—Prentiss.”
 
To make matters worse, most of the Toyaats were in the back country on the flanks of a caribou¹³⁴ herd¹³⁵, and Jees Uck was with them.  Removing to a distance seemed to bring her closer than ever, and Neil Bonner found himself picturing her, day by day, in camp and on trail.  It is not good to be alone.  Often he went out of the quiet store, bare-headed and frantic¹³⁶, and shook his fist at the blink of day that came over the southern sky-line.  And on still, cold nights he left his bed and stumbled into the frost, where he assaulted the silence at the top of his lungs, as though it we............