“Everything,” responded the coach, gloomily. “It so happens that he is the chief trustee and that he donates the most money to the school. Although Colonel Morrell owns the school it is really run by a board of trustees, and the head trustee is Melvin Gates. He has never gotten over the affair of the last Dimsdale game, and he positively refuses to allow the school to play the other outfit. As he holds most of the power I suppose the colonel can’t risk losing his support, so we have to go without our game each year.”
“Is he the only one against it?” Jim asked.
“Yes,” nodded the coach. “The only one.”
Vench snorted in disgust. “Can you beat that? Just because something happened long ago he has to act like a spoiled baby about it! That’s what I call fine, noble sportsmanship!”
“You don’t know much about it,” grumbled Hudson. “This is only your second year. Wait until you have had to swallow their insults for four years. Why, look at the Roxberry game, and what those guys did. Started yelling every time the signals were called, so that we couldn’t get them. If I had my way I’d turn the whole corps loose to clean ’em off the field.”
Young Major Rhodes, former cadet captain of the senior class and now chief drill instructor, drifted in just then. “I agree with Hudson,” he said, quietly. “I had to put up with it for four years and then finally graduated without getting a chance to play against them. I think we’ve been wrong about the whole thing from start to finish. Suppose a delegation of you fellows go and see the colonel and tell him that the whole school wants to play Dimsdale.”
“What good will that do?” asked Coach Brier.
“I don’t know that it will,” confessed Rhodes. “But I do know that there will be a meeting of the trustees on Friday and at that time the colonel can put it up to them again.”
“And get turned down once more,” snapped Berry, to whom Dimsdale was a nightmare.
Rhodes shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don’t know, but you can at least try. Someday the break has got to be made, and the sooner the better.”