A moment after the two men, both with pistols in their hands, came out of the kitchen and started to come up-stairs. "Stop, Luke Craig, for you can't come up here," said the boy. With a hoarse laugh the man sprung up the steps to fall back as a pistol flashed in his face and roll back to the bottom, knocking his companion down too. But the latter quickly sprung to his feet and dashed out of the house to where their horses were hitched. His horse was a white one, and his comrade's was Sable Satan, and to the latter he ran. But up went the window and in a loud voice Billy cried: "I've got my rifle on you, and I'll fire if you take my horse." 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. These virtues on the part of Master Steve Gobel, with his growing love of Mollie, made him very assuming, and he forced his company upon the little maid, and had things pretty much his own way, as all the boys seemed afraid of him. As for Billy he let him have his own way for awhile, and then determined not to stand it any longer he sought Steve Gobel for a settlement of the affair, the result of which was, the teacher hearing them quarreling and coming out took the word of young Cody's rival about it, and gave my hero a severe whipping before the whole school. Since his meeting Mollie Hyatt, Billy had been a most exemplary youth, never having had a single whipping, and this cut him to the heart so deeply that he did not seem to feel the pain of the rod. And it made him treasure up revenge against Steve Gobel, who was laughing at him during the castigation.