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In his forty years as a freelance writer and newspaper reporter, Bill Kelly had interviewed and written about hundreds of names familiar to us: Mickey Rooney, Rory Calhoun, Sylvester Stallone, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Broderick Crawford, Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Ginger Rogers, Ida Lupino, John Wayne, Aldo Ray, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Sugar Ray Leonard, Muhammad Ali, and Henry Armstrong are among many.

Bill has authored an astounding 15,000 magazine articles -- a phenomenal feat for any writer. He had appeared in Poker Digest, Card Player, Real West, True West, Treasure Search, Treasure Cache, Lost Treasure, South Bay, Country Review, True Detective, Inside Detective, California Highway Patrolman, Oklahoma State Trooper, Texas Highway Patrol, Inland Empire, Reader’s Digest, Poker World, Ring Magazine, Boxing Illustrated, K.O., and Variety.

His freelance work has appeared in too many California newspapers to list here, but they include, Herald Examiner, Orange County Register and Press-Enterprise.

His critically-acclaimed Collector’s Edition of Bill Kelly’s Encyclopedia of Gunmen is a reference book treasured by historians and Western buffs alike. Bill’s second book, Treasure Trails and Buried Bandit Booty, is a collection of true accounts of buried outlaw swag, and contains clues to reportedly hidden loot throughout the United States.

Bill recently appeared on the History channel as an old west historian in High Rollers: The History of Gambling.

His latest book is Gamblers of the Old West ($24.95). An autograph copy can be purchased by contacting Bill by e-mail: wildbill@cosmoaccess.net or by snail mail: 29759 Longhorn Dr. Canyon Lake, Ca. 92804.

Bill Was born in Tom’s River, New Jersey, on May 5, 1927. He now resides in Canyon Lake, California, where he spends most of his waking hours writing tons of articles to be enjoyed by thousands of readers.

His book, EMPTY SADDLES, is a nostalgic tribute to the sagebrush sagas of the 1940s and 50s, and contains Bill’s interviews with fifty Cowboy stars that made cinema history. No release date has been set for this book at this writing

CANADA BILL AND THE RIVERBOAT GAMBLERS

The gamblers of the Old West were not all cavaliers of myth - and they were not always products of the western frontier. From the 1850's until after the turn of the century, in an era known as the Gilded Age, came a special breed of men who suckled on the essence of gambling lore and cut their teeth on golden legends of the riverboats. They were compounded of the mighty saga grizzly bear hunters, leather-jacket soldiers, and slatternly dressed merchants - far from the chivalrous gentlemen of Hollywood legend. It is estimated that some 3,000 riverboat gamblers supported the steam packers that sailed up and down the Mississippi into the mid-19th century.

"No group of men ever boarded the steam packers so profoundly and widely distrusted and no one ever became more generally respected," observed one newspaper editor as he pondered the lives of professional riverboat gamblers. They had to come from somewhere - the West was too young to have many native sons. But, come he from North, South, East, or Overseas, once a man boarded a steam packer, gambling got into his blood. They were all atoms aiding in building an Monarchy.

At first, early-day bluenoses of society considered them a menace, corrupt men who would kill those they could not hoodwink. It was a familiar tale in many parts of the West of the gambler who was thrown overboard or left stranded on a sandbar - unless he had made a prior "arrangement" with the captain. But gradually they became an asset to those boat operators with financial difficulties. It was the riverboat gamblers, they realized, who drank whiskey and filled their tills during long-night sessions of card playing. In 1858 a published article took note that the liquor tab for the card players in one 10-hour session was $791.50.

They became not only an extraordinary attraction for boat operators, but for dime novel writers as well. To the bored, frontier housewife, imprisoned in remote log cabins and ranches, and puritanical mid-19th century towns, the riverboat gambler became a romantic hero in contrast to the bone-weary, pedestrian, hard-working men who encircled them. Suddenly, gamblers were welcomed aboard and treated with the utmost respect. Now they dressed up in hand-made shirts of delicate Shantung silk from Japan - so fragile they were unable to withstand the rigors of ordinary laundries. In time, they became so popular that their lives were discussed by many with as much dynamism as the gunfighters and badmen who roamed the rowdy cowtowns. Their existence was almost paralyzing.

Granted, myth and fable have always had an incestuous relationship with fact and actuality where the riverboat gambler is concerned. Certainly, for all their magnification, an examination of their lives yields the fact that many gamblers paid gratis money for the privilege of sailing with certain riverboat captains. Many were men of evil, ruthless cheats who didn't ply their trade on luck or skill. It is estimated that of the 3,000-odd riverboat gamblers, a mere handful were honest gamblers. These were men of extraordinary skill.

Dime novel writers wrote of their "smoldering dark eyes," and the "tense alertness" that made an opponent uncomfortable. It was a notorious fact that the top riverboat gamblers were George Devol; and Dick Hargraves, the most successful of the honest gamblers; Canada Bill Jones, the foremost practitioner of three-card monte; and John Powell. Powell, a completely honest gambler, fell under considerable scrutiny of newspaper and magazine editorials of his day.

Although Powell spent most of his time turning cards, he was a well educated man who turned down a chance to run for Congress when his native state of Missouri beckoned. A close confidant of Andrew Jackson and Stephen A. Douglas, his advice was repeatedly sought by Louisiana politicians when he was ashore in the posh home he upheld in New Orleans.

Eyewitness accounts of Powell's three-day poker game aboard the Atlantic, highlighted several dime novels of the early West. The story goes that Powell won over $52,000 from the rich and famous Jules Devereaux, a Louisiana planter. From the writer it is evident that Powell's most flourishing years were from 1845 to 1858 when he netted $100,000 a year. In the fall of 1858 Powell won $8,000 in four hours from a young Englishman, who, immediately went up on deck, put a pistol to his head, and blew his brains out. Powell was so unnerved by the event that he returned the $8,000 to his family in England.

After that, Powell was never the cool, cocksure gambler he once had been. It was inevitable that he would returned to the river and within a year, go bust. John Powell, once the greatest cardshark to ever sail the Mississippi, died in endmost poverty. In his memoirs, Tom Ellison, a riverboat gambler, recalled: "I've seen fellows pick every card in a pack, and call it without missing once. I've seen them shuffle them one for one all though from top to bottom, so that they were in the same position after a dozen shuffles that they were in at first. They'd just flutter them up like a flock of quail and get the aces, kings, queens, jacks and tens all together as easy as pie. A sucker had no more chance against those fellows than a snow ball in a red-hot oven. They were good fellows, free with their money as water, after scheming to bust their heads to get it. A hundred didn't bother them any more than a chew of tobacco would you.

I saw a fellow lose his whole tobacco crop in one night and get up and never mind it particularly. Many a time I've seen a game player just skin off his watch and ring and studs and play them in. Men often lost their goods playing in their way bills. I've seen them betting a bale of cotton at a crack, and it wasn't at all uncommon to hear an old planter betting off his Negroes on a good hand. Every man who ever ran on the river knows that these old planters used to play their lady servants, valuing them all the way from $300 to $1,500. I saw a little colored boy stand up at $300 to back his master's faith in a little flush that wasn't any good on earth."

George Devol, the legendary gambler, wrote in his autobiography Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi, that William "Canada Bill" Jones was the shrewdest gambler he had ever seen. He described Bill thusly:

"...a character one might travel the length and breadth of the land and never find his match, or run across his equal. Imagine a medium- sized, chicken-headed, tow-haired sort of a man with mild blue eyes, and a mouth nearly from ear to ear, who walked with a shuffling, half- apologetic sort of a giant, and who, when his countenance was in repose, resembled an idiot. His clothes were always several sizes too large, and his face was as smooth as a woman's and never had a particle of hair on it.

"Canada was a slick one. He had a squeaking, boyish voice, and awkward gawky manners, and a way of asking fool questions and putting on a good natured sort of a grin, that led everybody to believe that he was the rangiest kind of sucker - the greenest sort of country jake. Woe to the man who picked him up, though, Canada was, under all his hypocritical appearance, a regular card shark, and could turn monte with the best of them. He was my partner for a number of years, and many are the suckers we roped in, and many the huge roll of bills we corralled."

That Canada Bill was the century's greatest manipulator of cards, is generally accepted among historians. He could show a sucker two aces and a queen and then, virtually in the act of throwing the cards in, palm the queen and present a third ace so that his victim could never find the queen. Canada Bill and his partners, George Devol, Tom Brown and Hally Chappell joined forces in 1850 and operated along the Ohio and Mississippi for nearly ten years. When they separated, each man had over $200,000.

What was especially notable with so many of the early gamblers was their versatility. By the end of the Civil War riverboat companies succumbed to the competition of steam locomotives. However, the railroads were not as tolerant of gamblers as the riverboats were. Three-card monte players were ousted on the spot.

In 1867 Canada Bill fired a letter off to a particularly notable locomotive tycoon, offering a barter of $25,000 a year for the franchise to function without being bothered. His offer was refused. Bill and Devol continued to operate auspiciously until 1874. Unfortunately, the travelling cardsharks lost their money as quickly as they made it. Being gambling men, both enjoyed "bucking the tiger" at the faro tables. It was Bill who was the originator of that classical gambler's comment unfolded below:

Bill and Devol were killing time between boats in a Mississippi cowberg when Bill found a faro game. He was several hundred dollars in the hole and losing steady when Devol approached him from the bar, and remarked, "Bill, don't you know the game's crooked!" Bill cocked an eye, and replied, "Damn it, George, I know that. But it's the only game in town." In 1877 Canada Bill wound up in Reading, Pa. The man who made thousands and fleeced some of the best card players in the world, ended up broke, having recently lost $150,000 at faro in Chicago. He was committed to Charity Hospital and where he died. A group of Chicago gamblers paid for his burial by raising funds by public subscription. Thus Canada Bill was spared the final mockery.