Transcript of Interview of Arthur “Slim” Dooley by Anna Melrose of the Missouri Bugle, 12 April 1934.

“How can I answer you missy, well, it all depends what picture they’re a wantin’ to see. Give ‘em a glimpse of the shiny tassels on the breasts of the girls in the Dodgewood Saloon and let em taste a whiskey slid down a bar I say.

As last man standing it don’t matter to me.

My experience is that the more eye-stretching the story is, the more an editor pays and I can tell it any way, dirty for the bars, noble for the bluestocking legion. The Shooting Of Maverick Shanks feeds everyone’s imagination.

I could even tell the truth.

Really? Well so be it, but it strikes me you got plenty to learn about your job.

Ok then I’ll tell you what really happened, with no corny “darn tootin’s” or “High Fallutin’s”.

The West I knew was disappointing.

Mainly I remember toothache, dust, saddle sores, lice and heat. Greedy, desperate, lonely men and toothless, pox-ridden whores.

I was there to make a fortune but soon learned that the real money was elsewhere.

That morning I was just another ragged scarecrow in the main street of Dodgewood. Marshall Hughes was the sheriff, employed to do the dirty work for Wade McCarthy the landowner. For him “Cleaning up the town” meant removing all opposition. Hughes was a small-time grifter like me, but with a badge. Shiftiest fellow I ever met. Now he’s a national hero thanks to yours truly.

Shanks was a poor farmer who’d been moved off his land by McCarthy. Only the devil and I know how he got his reputation as a gunslinger.

Anyhow, He’d got drunk the night before and made some idle threats in the saloon.

I got offered money to be in the posse to run him out of town.

Hughes, me and maybe five other men found Shanks lying alone in a doorway sleeping off his drink. The “twenty desperados at his side” were added for the Washington Post years later, then it got written in the song, now you can’t unsay it. Marshall kicked him. Shanks jumped up, took a hammer from his pocket and rushed at Hughes threatening him with a “nailing”. They started kicking and biting like small boys but Marshall Hughes’s gun went off in his hand. The bullet went straight through his own forehead. At this point the others ran but I stayed to calm Shanks down. He came rushing on me with his stupid hammer and I shot him dead in self-defence. Only man I ever killed.

I went to Wade McArthy for a reward and he tried to make me sheriff, but by this time I’d had enough, he gave me 50 dollars and I got the train back East the next day.

So that’s it Miss Melrose, all that occurred.

What’s that? You’ve changed your mind? Very wise!

Well then Missy, let’s begin again! You Ready? The dying testimony of Slim Dooley, the last Western hero.

The bartender slipped another whiskey down the bar as I waited for the arrival of Marshall William Hughes, finest lawman in the West. Outside tumbleweed blew down the street and nothing could be heard except the creaking of the swing doors…… “