applied for work to the President of the Elliott Bay National Bank, it
was not an act of such presumption as some might suppose. No one, to be
sure, when he saw the high cheek-bones, wiry black hair brushed
pompadour, dull brown eyes, and copper complexion, could possibly have
been deceived by Johnny's well-cut clothes, clean linen, and good
English. Nor did Johnny affect these things as a disguise or as
signifying that, in adopting the apparel and speech of the white man, he
had renounced his nationality--had, to all intents and purposes, become
a dead Indian. Quite to the contrary, what secured Johnny his position
in the bank was precisely that, besides having a pleasant manner and
civilized ways, he was so manifestly an exceptionally live Indian.

The Elliott Bay National's famous line of "red paper" had paid from the
start. When, some years before, the proposition to loan old Peter
Coultee, a full blood of the Puyallup reservation, was laid before the
directors, they had laughed, but, like true Western men, they wanted to
know the details. What they learned was that old Peter Coultee owned one
hundred and sixty acres of fine reservation land, well stocked and
highly cultivated; that his crop of hops was fast ripening; that he
needed money to pay the hop-pickers of his own tribe; and that hop-house
receipts in the White River Valley were as good as wheat receipts in the
Palouse. This put the matter in other, at least, than a sneering light,
and one of the laughing directors offered to visit the reservation and
make a full report. The result was that old Peter Coultee got his loan,
and that this turned out to be the first of many others, both to himself
and to his tribesmen, and all of much mutual profit alike to white man
and red.

When, accordingly, Johnny Kitsap did the Elliott National the honor of
preferring its employment to that of the government, the president did
not laugh, but, with all due formality, laid his application before the
board, and suggested that a bank which loaned money to Indians might in
time find it convenient to have a clerk who could interpret not only the
language of the Siwash customers, but the more subtle emotions of the
Indian heart. And so Johnny came by his job, and the bank had as little
cause to regret it as the first loan to old Peter Coultee, which was the
original cause of it.

To the young Indian, the bank became a magic house. The brass-barred
windows before the tellers; th