e wire cages; the tiled floors; the great
doors of the vault, with the _tick-tick-tick_ of the time locks; all
seemed to him to be parts of a powerful chieftain's house. The vault
itself, with its store of gold and currency, and its cabinet of
mysterious treaties, which the _tyee_ made with the busy white men,
filled him with awe. This was the white man's magic treasure-chest,
wherein money bred money. No one bought or sold, so far as he could see,
yet this treasure-chest paid salaries, distributed profits, and always
continued full. With his imagination thus enlisted in firing his work
with the zest of play, it is no wonder that he proved an apt pupil and
in a rapidly flying trio of years had filled various positions and had
earned high appreciation.

With his entrance upon the duties of collection clerk, Kitsap became the
credit man on all "red paper." Every bit of Indian business received the
approval of the Chief before the discount committee would act upon it.
Thus the young Indian became surely, even if indirectly, a power on the
reservation, where the tribal leaders regarded him as being at heart a
white man and continued to address him quizzingly as _Italapas_ (The
Coyote That Wanders). Kitsap maintained a modest room in Seattle,
enjoyed the privileges of an athletic club, owned a one-twentieth
interest in a yacht, and, out on the reservation, kept a cayuse in
father Kitsap's corral and a suit of Indian finery in father Kitsap's
house. Thus he zigzagged across the borderland of civilization and led a
most picturesque, but strictly honorable, double life.

Kitsap had been four years in the bank when three hop-buyers from St.
Louis attempted to raid the White River hop fields in advance of picking
and to buy the entire crop of the valley at fourteen cents a pound. The
raid had progressed far towards success when Kitsap accidentally heard
of it.

The Indian hop-growers of the reservation had made their fall estimates,
Kitsap had inspected their fields and approved their items, and some ten
thousand dollars in "red paper" was entered on the books of the Elliott
Bay National Bank, the loans to be secured by the warehouse receipts on
hops. Kitsap had spent the first Sunday of the picking on the
reservation, greeting friends who had come on their annual pilgrimage
to the hop fields from other reservations; and early on Monday morning
he was on the way to take a train for Seattle, when Peter Coultee's
cayuse overtook