The man evidently believed that he would, from what he had seen, and mounting his own horse dashed swiftly away in the darkness while Billy returned to the one he had shot.
He found him badly wounded, but not fatally, and putting him in his father's buggy drove him to the nearest doctor, at whose house he remained for months before he was well again.
CHAPTER VII.
LOVE AND RIVALRY.
Finding that Billy was becoming far more accomplished as a rider and shot, than in his books, Mrs. Cody determined to send him to a small school that was only a few miles away.
Billy, though feeling himself quite a man, yielded to his mother's wishes and attended the school, which was presided over by a cross-grained Dominie that used the birch with right good earnest and seeming delight.
Of course Billy's love of mischief got him many a whipping; but for these he did not seem to care until there suddenly appeared in the school another pupil in the shape of a young miss just entering her teens.
The name of this young lady was Mollie Hyatt, and she was the daughter of a well-to-do settler who had lately arrived, and was as pretty as a picture.
Billy's handsome face and dark eyes won her young heart, and the love-match was going smoothly along until a rival appeared in the field in the shape of a youth two years the junior of young Cody, and larger and stronger.