Makes Much Radiation tapped the steel with his fingernail. “Not so much,” he stated. “Not-so-much. Mr. Thomas came up with better stuff than this from the Confederate States of America for my sister’s puberty ceremony.” He tossed the saber negligently to the ground. “But what can you expect from a bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing whiteskin stinkards?”

When he heard the last word, Jerry Franklin went rigid. That meant he’d have to fight Makes Much Radiation—and the prospect scared him right down to the wet hairs on his legs. The alternative was losing face completely among the Sioux.

“Stinkard” was a term from the Natchez system and was applied these days indiscriminately to all white men bound to field or factory under their aristocratic Indian overlords. A “stinkard” was something lower than a serf, whose one value was that his toil gave his masters the leisure to engage in the activities of full manhood: hunting, fighting, thinking.

If you let someone call you a stinkard and didn’t kill him, why, then you were a stinkard—and that was all there was to it.

“I am an accredited representative of the United States of America,” Jerry said slowly and distinctly, “and the oldest son of the Senator from Idaho. When my father dies, I will sit in the Senate in his place. I am a free-born man, high in the councils of my nation, and anyone who calls me a stinkard is a rotten, no-good, foul-mouthed liar!”

There—it was done. He waited as Makes Much Radiation rose to his feet. He noted with dismay the well-fed, well-muscled sleekness of the young warrior. He wouldn’t have a chance against him. Not in hand-to-hand combat—which was the way it would be.