If he had done that he would be near, very near.

She paused in the trail and gathered her breath, and cried out his name.

Three times she called it, and only the low whine in Peter's throat came in answer.

Twice again during the next ten minutes she cried out as loudly as she could into the darkness.
And still no answer came back to her through the gloom ahead.
The trail had dipped, and she felt the deepening slush of swamp-mire under her feet.

She sank in it to her shoe-tops, and stumbled into pools knee-deep, and Peter wallowed in it to his belly.