"Why don't you go in for a big ranch?" he said to Archie one evening, when the four were yawning sleepily over the fire after a day spent motoring in the wind. "There's the Arivista property in Sonoma County. I hear they want to sell--ten thousand acres." The idea of becoming a large landowner appealed to the Californian in Archie. They talked the matter over, and it resulted in their all motoring down the State to the Arivista property. In the end they bought at considerable expense this ten-thousand-acre tract of mountain, valley, and plain, and began elaborate improvements. It had been once a "cattle proposition," but Archie's idea was to turn it into fruit and nuts, as well as a gentleman's estate of a princely sort, with a large "mission style" cement mansion. He engaged an architect and a superintendent, and began building and planting on an elaborate scale. Adelle was glad to see her Archie really interested in something and encouraged him in all his ambitious plans. They motored frequently to the ranch to inspect operations. It took them two days to go and return, and there were only rough accommodations at the ranch. But she liked it. The great untamed spaces of hill and plain, with the broad horizon of blue mountains, appealed to her. She was less interested in the big house, the barns, outbuildings, orchards,--all the paraphernalia that goes with an "estate," which Archie wished impatiently to have created at once. It took, naturally, a great deal of money. Before the work at Arivista was finally stopped, it was estimated that close to half a million dollars of Clark's Field had been poured into this California "ranch," from which, of course, less than a quarter was ever recovered, no other rich man being found with similar conceptions of what a "ranch" should be. All told, the Davises lived upon their ranch less than four months during the next spring, and before the blossoms had finally fallen sufficient reasons were found to move them back nearer people and the ordinary diversions of life. Water, it was discovered, could not be got in sufficient quantity. The relaxing climate of the south did not seem to agree with Adelle. And, above all, a child was expected.