The automobile was being increasingly used in desert travel and transcontinental trips were no longer a daring adventure or the result of a bet. Sixty miles south of Shoshone there was a wretched road that pitched down the washboard slope of one range into a basin, then up the gully-crossed slopes of another. Part of the transcontinental highway, it was a headache to the traveler. Radiators usually boiled down hill and up. To this desolate spot went Dad Fairbanks. The hot blasts from the dunes of the Devil’s Playground and the dry bed of Soda Lake made summer a hell and the freezing winds from Providence Mountains turned it into a Siberian winter. Here in 1928 Dad Fairbanks built cabins and a store and installed a gas pump. Water was hauled in. “Coming or going,” he said, “when they reach this place they’ve just got to stop, cool the engine, and fill up for the hill ahead.” The place is Baker on Highway 91. Here, as at Shoshone, sales technique was tossed into the ash can. Stopping for dinner one day I met Dad coming out of the dining room. “How’s the fare?” I asked. “Are you hungry?” “Hungry as a bear....” “All right. Go in. A hungry man can stand anything.” Then in an undertone he added: “Employment agent sent me the world’s worst cook. Take eggs.” Later as we talked in the sheltered driveway a Rolls-Royce limousine drove up and a well-fed and smartly tailored tourist stepped out and spoke to Dad: “Do you know me?” he asked. Dad looked at him hesitantly. “Face is familiar.” “You loaned me $300, 25 years ago.” “I loaned a lotta fellows money.” “But I never paid it back.” “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.