Cabanné laid his plans well for the capture of Leclerc’s outfit. As soon as the boat passed his post he organized a party under charge of Peter A. Sarpy, clerk at the post, to go and arrest Leclerc. Sarpy picked out about a dozen men, among whom was the new engagé, La Barge. They were all well armed and carried besides a small cannon. Going to a point near old Fort Lisa, where the channel of the river came in close to a high impending bank, Sarpy stationed his men there and awaited Leclerc’s arrival. At the proper time, when the voyageurs were cordelling the boat along a sandbar just opposite, scarcely a hundred yards off, he ordered Leclerc’s party to surrender or he would “blow everything out of the water.” Although Leclerc had some thirty men, they were mostly unarmed, and could make no effective resistance. They surrendered, and the whole outfit returned to Cabanné’s post, where the liquor was confiscated and the expedition broken up. [Sidenote: SERIOUS COMPLICATIONS.] This drastic measure came near proving fatal to the company’s business upon the river. Leclerc immediately returned to St. Louis, where he began suit against the company and lodged a criminal complaint against Cabanné. The matter bore a very serious aspect for a time. It was with the utmost difficulty, and with an evident resort to misrepresentation, that the company’s license was saved; and doubtless it would have been revoked but for the influence of Senator Thomas H. Benton. As it was, it cost the company a large sum of money, increased the public distrust of this powerful concern, and banished Cabanné, one of its most efficient servants, permanently from the country. [Sidenote: THE PAWNEES.] At Cabanné’s post La Barge was employed in the various duties of engagé, and was frequently sent out to surrounding bands of Indians with small outfits of merchandise to trade for their furs. His most interesting and valuable experience in this line was with the Pawnees, who resided on the Loup Fork of the Platte, about one hundred miles west of the Missouri. They were what are called permanent village Indians; that is, they had fixed villages made of large, strong houses, where they regularly lived; while many of the tribes, like the Sioux, Crows, and Blackfeet, lived only in tents, and were always moving from one place to another. The Pawnees, it is true, roved about a great deal on their hunting and war expeditions, but they had a fixed place of abode to which they always returned from their wanderings. Their houses were circular in form and quite large, being sometimes sixty feet in diameter, and, to judge from pictures of them, resembled in appearance, when seen from a distance, a group of oil tanks in a modern petroleum district.