Chiles, Reece and I got to the camp about 2 o’clock, near six miles from where the elk was killed. After dinner we went out with pack mules and the necessary hatchets and butcher knives, and two of the drivers, to butcher the elk. The animal was a splendid specimen of his kind, supporting a magnificent pair of antlers, fully hardened and developed, and was fatter than any other animal of the deer kind I have seen, before or since. We butchered and brought to camp on the pack mules every part of his carcass, including the antlers. The latter were brought home to Jackson county. We feasted on the flesh of the fat elk for several days, and my recollection is that I never tasted better meat. The remaining part of the journey was uneventful, the entire party remaining with the train until we were within eighty miles of the state line of Missouri. Then, in company with Captain Chiles, I started, before daylight, to make a forced march to Westport. We rode forty miles before we halted for breakfast, obtaining it at a settler’s cabin in the vicinity of Black Jack, arriving in Westport late in the evening, in the latter part of September, feeling very willing to rest once more in a comfortable house and bed. I saw my friend Reece about a year after he had returned to his home in Missouri still making a fight for life, but during the second year he struck his flag and made a final surrender. At Westport the drivers were paid off and disbanded, but I was not present to witness the separation of the company that had formed a companionship, offensive and defensive, during this long and tiresome journey across the plains. Doubtless nearly all of them, in the vernacular of the Western mountains, have “crossed over the range.” Lewis & Clark’s Route Retraveled. The Upper Missouri in 1858. BY W. B. NAPTON. CHAPTER I.