A DOG HERO OF THE DESERT.

Otago Witness, Issue 3444, 16 March 1920, Page 59

A DOG HERO OF THE DESERT.

A wise, old dog that has saved the lives of many persons is spending his declining years in a dog sanitarium in Pasadena, California. His name is "Rufus," but he is known to his many friends and admirers in the South-west as "the hero of the desert." For many years this sagacious friend of man, with his partner, Lou Westcott Beck, made trips into the sunscorched, trackless wastes in the Death Valley region, carrying aid to prospectors and others who. had lost their way and were at the point of. death from thirst, exhaustion, or the bites of poisonous reptiles. The following brief account of "Rufus" is given in "Our Dumb Animals" (Norwood, Mass.): — The end of his days on earth is not far off. He' is spent and feeble after his many long and weary journeys over the burning and blinding: sands with his pioneer master. He will no doubt soon fall asleep. Even now he day-dreams probably of that long, long desert trail, or the glad time he will have when he can rejoin his companions of by-gone days. Lou Westcott Beck and Rufus were intrepid pioneers in a life-saving project which received scant support and tardy recognition. Together they fared forth on their mission of mercy, the former carrying sign-boards and cans of paint, the latter laden with saddle-bags of restoratives and poison antidotes. While Beck set up the guide posts or painted the water signs Rufus detored widely and succoured many a prospector who but for him would have died miserably from the delirium of thirst or the venom of snakebites. The work of these two great benefactors is over. Beck died in July, 1917, and since then the United States Government has appropriated 100,000dol to carry out the 2>roject that he and his devoted dog started. Rufus will be well provided for by Dr T. H. Agnew, a veterinarian and personal friend of Beck. _ His years of hardship, of life-saving service on the desolate "wastes under heavy saddle-bags, plodding along continuously in his leather boots, are not without their reward. His many friends who used to see him on the streets and pat him with approval as he started out on his desert trips will not forget him in his old age. A good friend ot Rufus, writing in the Pasadena Evening Post,

closes her tribute of praise to this noble, self-sacrificing dog with these words: "I shall always think of him with the background of the desert, and all about him limitless space. I shall think of. the dawn with its wonderful orange and flame, and desert blues, when the morning stars are singing, the moon has sunk out of sight, and Arcturus is blazing. Through it all I shall hear that musical baying of Rufus, as if he called to tl»fc distant mountains to send forth their streams of living water, and I shall remember the intrepid dog-soul that never faltered, the life-saver, Rufus of the desert."