# nearer dark status: conceptual expanded near dark world example opening it was dusk when lieutenant jesse hooker staggered into the abandoned indian camp at arkansas river valley. half blind from an enemy's musket powder burns they'd crawled ir way through noxious swampland and barren high desert plain for four agonizing days before deciding to just give up and quietly die. eyes burning and delirious with thirst ey spotted a filthy teepee in the distance and staggered inside to rest for what ey knew was the last time laying down ey felt the crunch of dead leaves beneath ir ragged mud-caked uniform. ir cutthroat company of confederate soldiers had been slaughtered at the hands of local union boys - mostly young farmhands but they'd turned out tougher than cured buffalo hide. badly injured jesse escaped - almost too easily ey thought - by hiding in a dried out creek bed filled with dozens of unidentifiable corpses from both sides // republic of bob