“A helluva lot of ’em didn’t,” Dad said.
The stranger reached into his pocket, pulled $1000 from a roll and handed it to Dad. “I’m Harry Oakes,” he said. “Where’s Ma?”
So they went over to Dad’s house and with Ma Fairbanks who had shared all of Dad’s fortunes, good and bad, they sat down and Oakes talked of the long trail that led from 300 borrowed dollars to an annual income of five million.
Harry Oakes had gone to Canada and learning that the legal title to a mining claim would expire at midnight on a certain date, he and his partner W. G. Wright sat up in a temperature of forty below, to relocate the Lakeshore Mine—Canada’s richest gold property.
Born in Maine, Harry Oakes became a subject of England and was at this time Canada’s richest citizen, with an estimated fortune of $200,000,000.
It was a long way from the Niagara palace back to Greenwater and Shoshone and as Ma Fairbanks and Dad and Harry sat in the plain little desert cottage, I couldn’t keep from wondering why a man with $200,000,000 would wait 25 years to repay that $300.
In his native town of Sangerville in Maine, Harry Oakes was criticized when, as a youngster with every opportunity to pursue a successful career according to the staid Maine formula, he became excited by gold. “Quick easy money.” “Just a dreamer.” He talked big, acted big, and was big.
But Harry Oakes started out in life to make a fortune by finding a gold mine and you can’t laugh aside the determination and courage with which he stuck to his purpose until he succeeded.
Dad Fairbanks spent nearly 50 years in Death Valley country and it is a bit ironical that at last, the Baker climate drove him from the desert to Santa Paula and later, of all places, to Hollywood.
“I should never have believed it of you,” I kidded.