“It must have been. No one else could or would have done it,” said Larry, walking unsteadily toward the club rooms.
CHAPTER XVII
The Game With Golden
A flutter of golden banners, ribbons, flags and flowers grew to a wave of gold as the team of Golden University raced out from a gateway between the stands and scattered rapidly to their positions on the playing field. The adherents of Golden, banked on the big stands to the third-base side of the oval, arose and sent volley after volley of cheers across the field to where the students and admirers of Cascade sat. A return broadside of applause greeted the opening attack of the greatest baseball battle of the year as the men and girls of Cascade welcomed the visitors.
Five minutes later a tumult suddenly broke loose on the Cascade side of the field. A ripple of applause, starting at one end of the stands grew and spread, until suddenly five thousand of the lovers of Cascade arose, and screamed their welcome to their team. Then, volley for volley, the rival schools fired their cheers across the field at each other, challenging to battle. The waves of blue on one side marked the sea of blue banners, and the sunshine slanting upon the golden banners sent the challenge back in heliographic flutters.
The long, rippling yell of Golden answered the booming, resonant war cry of Cascade as the teams practiced. Down in front of each section cheer masters, animated jumping-jacks, armed with flags and megaphones, spurred the throat-weary ones to louder efforts, while the teams, tense and silent, practiced with set lips.
In the throng just back of first base Larry Kirkland, miserable and dejected, was sitting alone brooding over the injustice of his lot and striving to hide the hot anger that was consuming him. During all the applause and the cheering he had remained silent; nor had he joined in the Cascade yell that greeted the diamond warriors when they ran onto the field.
Kirkland had fresh reason for anger and resentment.
In the first bitterness of his disappointment he had made desperate efforts to reach Major Lawrence by telegraph, to disprove the accusations of professionalism and to secure reinstatement before the game was played. In this he had been aided most actively by Paw Lattiser, who had come to his rescue with advice and who had attempted to cheer him in his disappointment. But Major Lawrence had gone East on a long-deferred business trip and could not be located and, as a crowning blow, he had taken Krag with him, so that after telegraphing several times to Pearton, and sending messages to be forwarded, it became evident that it would be impossible to reach Major Lawrence and secure his evidence in time to compel the reinstatement of Larry Kirkland prior to the game with Golden, and the effort had been abandoned reluctantly. Although Larry did not know it, Paw Lattiser had carried the case before the faculty, and urged strongly that justice be done, but the faculty had declined to interfere in the matter or dictate to the Athletic Board of Control.
This disappointment was a bitter blow to Larry Kirkland. He had staked his hopes upon the game with Golden, and further, to be barred from that contest meant the loss, for a year at least, of the coveted C—the honor mark of Cascade and the Cross of Honor for college athletes. So bitter had been his disappointment that he had refused to attend the game, in spite of the urging of Katsura and of the others who had remained loyal to him in his troubles. To his surprise, Larry discovered that he had more friends in Cascade than he ever had imagined. Several of the Seniors, who scarcely had spoken to him before, had come to him to express their sympathy and their indignation and to pledge him their assistance and two or three of the team who belonged, by former alliance, to the Haxton-Baldwin crowd, had assured him that they believed him innocent and that in their opinion it was a contemptible trick to protest him at the last minute.
Larry had won further admiration by maintaining strict silence in regard to his suspicions. To Katsura and Winans he had expressed his belief that Harry Baldwin was behind the accusations, and Katsura gravely had advised him not to mention his belief or make any charges until he had the proof.