“I—I—well, I did think of it,” confessed Larry lamely.
“You won’t be on the second team, my boy,” said Lattiser calmly. “I know Haxton. He has realized all along he was wrong. He’ll choose you, and the little Jap and Winans for his team, and the second team will not have a chance. I purposely gave him the opportunity. Whether he wants you or not he’ll pick you now just to show he is fair—which he is not. The fact that he isn’t fair will make him do it.”
“He’s a wise old fowl,” remarked Winans. “He has Haxton figured out just as I have.”
“The trouble will not be with Haxton,” said Larry. “It will be with Baldwin. He’ll not let me on the team if he can keep me off it.”
CHAPTER XII
The Plan Succeeds
Lattiser’s prediction proved true. On the first day of practice, after Haxton had spent two hours studying the candidates, he boldly posted a notice on the bulletin board, naming the fourteen players he had selected as members of the Varsity squad. Eight were veterans of the team of the preceding season; one was Jacobs, a youth who had tried for the team and who had been carried as a substitute; one was Wares, a new man who came highly recommended from a preparatory school, and the others were the rebels—Larry Kirkland, Trumbull, Winans and Katsura.
Even Larry was surprised to find that all four of them had been selected; and he was relieved, for secretly he had feared that Haxton, who was known to hold prejudice against the Japanese, would surrender on all other points and bar Katsura.
The announcement of the team make-up broke the opposition to Haxton and his methods. As Lattiser had shrewdly guessed, Haxton had selected, as regulars, the very men upon whom the “knockers” based their charges of unfairness, and left them nothing upon which to base their charges. There was an enthusiastic movement among the lower classmen, who thought they could play well, to organize a team to play the regulars, but they were defeated in a farcical game and, true to their promise, they ceased criticising and became loyal adherents of the Varsity. Sentiment in the school had been unified, and the college spirit of Cascade revived. Only one sore spot remained—and that was the enmity between Larry Kirkland and Harry Baldwin.
“If only we played different positions,” Larry lamented to Winans. “It seems as if I always have to fight that fellow. One or the other of us has to be third baseman of this team.”
“He has declared he wouldn’t play on a team with you,” remarked Winans. “I guess he’ll have to make good.”