Yavapai County, Arizona, is a lot of dirt, rocks, and heat. I spent a few weeks outside Prescott once. The heat index was 140. It was so hot the Prescott Daily Courier reported that local chickens were laying omelettes.

Jerome lies to the northeast, an old copper mining town. Farther east is beautiful Sedona, which features Earth’s largest natural collection of Range Rover Defenders.

In the topmost northern section of the county is Seligman (population 446). There isn’t much in Seligman. You’re looking at a few abandoned gas stations, a couple Route 66 tourist shops, old motels, and people whose front yards are dirt.

It was in this setting that a 2-year-old boy named Boden Allen got lost. Boden is adventurous kid, a typical towheaded toddler. He was playing outside while his father was working on the roof. His mother was tending to their 1-year-old.

Two-year-olds can be sneaky. Boden just slipped out of the yard, and that was that.

The kid was nowhere to be found. His parents sounded the alarm. Yavapai Search and Rescue took to the desert on a manhunt. Or a “boy” hunt, as it were.

The search turned up nothing. One hour turned into two. Two turned into 10. Ten turned into 16. It was like looking for hay in a haystack.

Night fell. Still no Boden.

His mother, Sarah said, “I looked at his empty bed in the middle of the night, and I’m like, ‘This isn’t real, he’s not — how is he not here? How is he out by himself somewhere in the dark?’”

Boden’s odds of survival were not good. The overnight temperatures sink down into the 20s. Not to mention the natural predators that wander the desert. You could get bit by a rattlesnake, fall into a canyon, or attacked by a coyote.

Enter Buford.

Burford is a fluffy 160-pound Anatolian Pyrenese, a working ranch dog with paws the size of supermarket chickens. He looks like a giant white Teddy bear, except that he weighs more than your grandmother.

That night, Buford was miles from home, doing ranch stuff, wandering the property. Buford found a frightened, little boy huddled beneath a tree. It was biting cold. Buford curled up beside the boy and slept against him to keep him warm.

The next morning, Scotty Dunton was working on his 25,000-cattle ranch in Kingman. Not long after sunup, Scotty saw Buford wandering up the dusty path, leading a small boy. The boy wore a tank top and pajama bottoms.

“I knew exactly who it was,” Scotty Dunton said.

Boden had wandered 7 miles from home. He was sobbing and dehydrated. The child guzzled about a gallon of water. In a few moments, Scotty called the sheriff’s department. A tearful reunion ensued.

All the locals agreed that Boden should not have survived. There were a hundred-and-one ways this could’ve gone wrong and only one way it could’ve gone right.

“There’s lions, there’s coyotes,” said Dunton. “There’s a couple of bears that came through a couple of weeks ago. There’s all sorts of hazards up here for that kid. …If the dog was with him, that dog would die rather than let that kid get hurt.”

So anyway, if you’re searching for evidence of actual angels on Earth, just remember, most of them have fleas.