Although La Barge was only in his seventeenth year he signed a contract binding himself to the service of the American Fur Company, as voyageur, engagé, or clerk, for a period of three years, at a salary of seven hundred dollars for the whole time.[7] He did not go as part of the boat’s crew, but as an employee of one of the posts. No place was specified in his engagement, but his assignment was left to the bourgeois of the different posts, who came down to the boat when it arrived, looked over the new engagés, and selected such as they thought would suit them. Young La Barge was a promising-looking lad, and did not get above Council Bluffs, where he was taken off and put to work at Cabanné’s post, a few miles above the modern city of Omaha. [Sidenote: BATTLE OF BAD AXE.] When the _Yellowstone_ returned from Fort Union, John P. Cabanné, the bourgeois in charge of the post, went down to St. Louis and took La Barge with him. While waiting to return to the upper country the young engagé took temporary service on the steamboat _Warrior_, Captain Throckmorton, bound for the seat of the Blackhawk, or Sac and Fox, war. She was loaded with government stores for Prairie du Chien, and La Barge went along in some subordinate capacity. It happened that she arrived at the scene of the Battle of Bad Axe just as that decisive conflict was going on. Captain Throckmorton saw a number of Indians trying to make their escape by swimming the river and he fired into them, killing several. They proved to be all women, and the over-zealous captain long had reason to regret his hasty action. After this adventure the _Warrior_ returned to St. Louis. [Sidenote: CABANNÉ AND LECLERC.]