Slocan Slim & The Kootenay Kid

Words & Music by Tim Hus
Copyright Tim Hus Music 2004


He was born in the Slocan Valley, was Slocan City Slim
And everybody knew that only a fool would dare to mess with him
He wore his gun low slung and he never would back down
And those who tried and those who died are buried on the edge of town

Then one day up the Pend ‘Oreille with a John B. Stetson lid
A stranger came with a gold chain and they called him the Kootenay Kid
He had a gamblers’ soul and an eye for gold and he played the high stakes
He was a big dealer in a paddle wheeler he came up the Kootenay Lake

Chorus:
From the silvery Slocan to the Kootenay River shore
They were big time believers with the gold fevers in the land of the Kootenay ore

Slocan Slim had a mining claim high up on the mountainside
He has bad luck in the piles of muck but he had a prospectors pride
Day after day he would toil away in the heat and in the cold
It took him 88 months of backbreak and grunt just to find a few flakes of gold

The Kootenay Kid was the opposite: he never worked at all
He liked to sleep in, drink tonic and gin and other fancy alcohol
He shuffled his cards with disregard and he never dressed twice the same
When the sun went down he could always be found dealin’ in a poker game

Chorus

Slocan Slim, he tossed his pick and he threw his shovel down
He said “I’m sick of the draft from the old mine shaft – tonight I’m goin’ to town”
It was a full moon and the big Saloon was crowded to the roof
Sittin’ at the bar with a big cigar the Kid was drinking eighty proof

When the Kootenay Kid saw Slocan Slim he got a sparkle in his eye
It wasn’t the gun that he wore low slung it was the gold poke at his side
He said with a smile in his elegant style “Club, spade or hearts
I am the king with the diamond ring I shuffle and I deal the cards”

Chorus

Slocan Slim picked up the cards but he was not a gambling man
And with every game he felt the pain of playing with a losing hand
And it didn’t take long ‘till the gold was gone that he worked so hard to find
And the big full moon and the Kids’ perfume drove him right out of his mind

Nobody told the Kootenay Kid that you don’t mess around with Slim
And I guess right away that it’s fair to say He won’t mess around again
There he sat in his John B. hat, grinning in his chair
After 88 months of back-break and grunt he shot him right then and there

Chorus

Times they pass and things they change and stories do get old
But the one they tell at the old hotel is the one that I’ve just told
Some recall it didn’t happen at all but some say that it did
Slocan Slim from Slocan City Shot down the Kootenay Kid

Slocan Slim from Slocan City Shot down the Kootenay Kid
Slocan Slim from Slocan City Shot down the Kootenay Kid