THE DEMONS OF DISCORD

"The man isn't well. He needs to rest and regain his strength." The gun waved at Keenan's chest. He took deep breath and walked into the corner followed by O'Mara. When he removed the collection of rags from his friend, he looked at O'Mara but he wasn't satisfied. "Take the sheet off him as well." Very reluctantly and with painful slowness, he pulled down the dirty sheet from head to toe and exposed a stone-cold, grey-faced and rigid Colmán. O'Mara's glance told him some of what he needed to know. "He's been dead for at least two days! Why, in God's name is he still here?" Young Keenan turned strange. His shoulders drooped and his head tilted to look sideways down and back at O'Mara. Yet his eyes were wide and bright and his voice was strong. "He was my company. Jack left for home weeks ago. I only had Colmán to talk to." That was it for O'Mara. He'd had enough. "Keenan, pull that sheet back up over his head. Now!" Miles Keenan bent down to obey but a second too second too long to only lift the sheet over his friend's feet. A flash of instinctive warning went through O'Mara's brain. He dived sideways to the floor as Keenan turned around with a a revolver in his hand, picked up from the near corpse, firing wildly where he he expected O'Mara to be. As O'Mara dropped to the wooden floor, he fired both barrels of his shotgun into Keenan's belly. The terrific blasts sent him flying backwards, almost bent double, arms and feet splayed out. He crashed into the wall of the cabin and slid to the floor with his chin on his chest and holes in his stomach pumping out blood and pieces of pulsating intestine.