But before he died, before his heart stopped beating in her arms, she wanted to reach Jolly Roger's friendly cabin, in the big swamp beyond the creek.

It was not that he could save Peter, but something told her that Jolly Roger's presence would make Peter's dying easier, both for Peter and for her, for in this first glad spring of her existence the stranger in the forest shack had brought sunshine and hope and new dreams into her life; and they had set him up, she and Peter, as they would have set up a god on a shrine.
So she ran for the fording place on Sucker Creek, which was a good half mile above the shack in which the stranger was living.

She was staggering, and short of wind, when she came to the ford, and when she saw the whirl and rush of water ahead of her she remembered what Jolly Roger had said about the flooding of the creek, and her eyes widened.
Then she looked down at Peter, piteously limp and still in her arms, and she drew a quick breath and made up her mind.

She knew that at this shallow place the water could not be more than up to her waist, even at the flood-tide.

But it was running like a mill-race.
She put her lips down to Peter's fuzzy little face, and held them there for a moment, and kissed him.
"We'll make it, Peter," she whispered.