The fall and winter brought little change in the situation, and when the holiday time came, Larry Kirkland found himself barred as completely from the Cascade team as he had been during his Freshman rebellion.
Day after day during the fall, while the team was playing and in training, he reported at the field, toiled at chasing the balls batted to outfielders by the regulars, and during the breathing spells worked with Katsura, Trumbull and Winans. At the first he secretly hoped that coach Haxton would see the injustice of the stand he had taken and permit them to participate in the practice, at least sufficiently to ascertain whether or not they were good enough to play the game. But after the first day, Haxton paid little or no attention to them, save to issue brief orders for them to go to the outfield and catch flies. If one of them dared advance to the infield and occupy a place temporarily vacant, he was sent back with a sharp rebuff. In the hours outside of practice, the ostracised quartette gathered on the lot near their “barracks” and indulged in real practice.
After three weeks of that kind of treatment, Larry found himself in a mood to rebel openly, to tell Haxton and Baldwin what he thought of them and to quit. Only the weekly letter from Krag, praising him for his pluck in sticking to it under trying circumstances, kept him from the move that would have been fatal. He managed to maintain a cheerful demeanor while practicing with the regulars, but occasionally, while with his own chums, he broke out in protests.
“Confound it, fellows,” he remarked one evening, as they rested after an hour of catching and fielding practice on their improvised field, “I don’t want them to think I’m a quitter, or that they can run over us this way. It is getting on Haxton’s nerves to have us come out and pretend that we like being errand boys. He knows we see the weaknesses of his team, and he knows that he is making a big mistake in treating us this way.”
“One of our philosophers says,” remarked Katsura, “that the more evil one does to a foe, the more one hates him.”
“But that isn’t the worst of it,” continued Larry, “I have a guilty feeling all the time that I am doing Cascade a lot of harm myself; that I ought to quit.”
“How do you figure that out?” inquired Winans.
“Haxton and Baldwin do not dislike any of you. They hate me and I have dragged all of you into it because you are my friends. If I’d quit going to the field, he’d soon give you fellows a chance”——
“It’s the principle of the thing, Larry,” said Trumbull. “Now, as for myself, I don’t care a bit whether I play on the team or not. In fact, I’d rather just be lazy and loaf around than get out there and hustle for a place on the team. But I can’t do it. I want to see Cascade get the right system in athletics. If we stick together we’ll soon have the sentiment of the better bunch of fellows with us and with the sentiment of the students behind us”——
“That is the big danger,” interrupted Winans. “If we win by taking control ourselves, we antagonize all the other crowd. There are some decent fellows with them; because they do not understand what the situation is, and they have their friends. Even if the secret societies did get them onto the team, they’re good players. It will not do athletics any good if we merely drive out one faction and put another in control.”