Lives Between the Dimensions

T he five men stood beside their horses, reins in hand, staring without spoken word down the rock rubble of the road. Puddles in potholes were frozen with a crisp, hollow layer of ice. The road disappeared from their intense study a few hundred yards up around a curve among the sturdy trunks of a dense stand of hickory and oak. But, they stared intently nevertheless. As if the forests and hillsides did not impede their view at all of the community and homesteads a mile or so up the way. It was just after daylight and a bitter cold morning. There had been a heavy frost the night before and every mile they had covered since leaving the relative security of Mingo Swamp seemed to drain their bodies of what precious little warmth they had left. Their breaths exhaled through the woolen scarves tied around their heads, over their ears and mouths leaving clouds of steam in the stillness of the December morning in Wayne County, Missouri. Actually they weren’t scarves at all. Not anym