“Dish, you take the right point,” Call said. “Soupy can take the left and Bert and Needle will back you up.”
-Lonesome Dove, Chapter 25
Finally, a quarter of the way into the book, the cattle drive sets out, with Dish riding in KhairAllah’s spot, right point, and Adam Hamid up front to his left where Soupy rode, and Mas’ūd and Muhammad pushing the herd from behind as Bert and Needle, who felt “unhappy and aggrieved” because no one in their right mind wants to eat trail dust for forty days. Except for Da’ūd and me, backing up the back-ups and thrilled to do so. Lonesome Dove wasn’t published until a year later, so it wasn’t as if we knew what roles we were re-enacting. More like Rawhide, but even Clint Eastwood didn’t ride drag, because all that dust would have dirtied his pretty cowboy costume, just like it dirtied my jeans and rugby shirt to the point that I had to throw them away when we reached Cairo.