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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

Archive of Wild West of Gambling
MADAME MOUSTACHE: ANGEL OF SIN

POKER ALICE, THE WEST’S BEST LADY GAMBLER

THE AMAZING MADAME VESTAL

BELLE STARR: THE WEST'S MOST FAMOUS FARO DEALER

FANNY PORTER: CARD CHEATER'S LADY

GERTRUDIS BARCELO: GAMBLING QUEEN OF SANTA FE

The West, men said, was hell on women and horses. But the so-called "frails," bullheaded and in petticoats, kept coming. The reason was obvious. West was where the men were.

Their families watched them leave, teary-eyed and with a sense of dire, sure they were riding out to their own funerals. It took a special kind of gallantry to survive the cruel and deadly wastelands beyond the chocolate, torturous waters of the Missouri River. Some came alone, some died alone, their bodies buried in unmarked graves strewn between Kansas City, Missouri, and the Pacific Coast. Those who survived the slavery or scalping knife of the Sioux or Arikara, the choking trail dust, or the snow-locked winters, ended up as soiled doves, madams, dance hall girls, or gamblers.

A few married and settled down, and stuck with their man through all the trouble he would have never had if he hadn't married her in the first place. Over 55,000 bawds plied their trade in the mining camps and cowtowns along the prairies. Strumpets and Jezebels were thicker than fleas on a grizzly, and it would have been difficult to find a female over 13 whose voice hadn't changed from no to yes. Some married, and became decent wives and mothers. But each one in turn, had reasoned that they had little to lose by pulling up stakes and moving on to New Mexico.

Despite family objections, one of these ladies was Gertrudis Barcelo. There is no evidence that she ever wanted to become anything other than a gambler. And from all reports a damn good one! Here is a description of her by a writer of New Mexico's early history: ".... sylph-like in movement with a slender figure, finely featured face, smooth and dark of Spanish decent, thin-lined, arched eyebrows, flowing dark hair, thin lips, a beautiful woman, with steady, proud head and the demeanor of a wild cat."

Early manuscripts portrayed Gertrudis as "La Tules" - a Mexican "Diamond Lil" - a ne'er-do-well who frequented every saloon and dancehall from Taos, to Santa Fe. La Tules is the Spanish diminutive for Gertrudis (English Gertrude). At first she was regarded with disdain in the various mining camps and railroad junctions where she operated, but all that changed when she won several hundred dollars from two of Santa Fe's most respected poker players. She opened her own gambling parlor, complete with an upstairs crib and liquor stock. Such a woman was a natural target for amorously inclined miners or trail hands and the colorful and resourceful Gertrudis attracted men at her green felt table the way a magnet draws steel filings. As she accumulated a small fortune, her reputation among luckless miners and trail hands grew until she became known as the best monte dealer in all Santa Fe. Quite an accomplishment. City records show there were 60-odd gambling halls in town.

One poor man made a strike and lost his shares to cigarillo-smoking Gertrudis Barcelo, and that alone was enough to make> her rich. With the money she got from the shares, she opened up the most luxurious gambling establishment in Santa Fe; thick Brussels carpets brought over the enormously difficult Santa Fe trail by freight wagon, hid the gloom of the hard-mud floor. The main bar wound around a gigantic room. Two more mahogany bars connected to form a quadrangle. Generous mirrors shipped in from the east, adorned the walls behind the bars, but were kept from the gambling casino itself. Elaborate chandeliers with sturdy candles, provided ample light. As a finishing touch, private card rooms stretched the length of today's Burro Alley from San Francisco Street to Palace Avenue along the Plaza. The private card rooms were strictly for professional gamblers, bonanza kings, and the affluent. Gertrudis set up strict rules for these rooms, where men came to exchange tall timber tales, drink rot-gut and play seven-up. Beyond the huge walnut doors, no women were allowed, except the proprietor herself. Her customers agreed. They wanted no female tugging at their sleeves for a free drink or a fast buck. They were gambling men and they came there to try their luck.

The drinks were bountiful but not as bountiful as the free lunch; roasted moose or beef with horse or donkey meat thrown in here or there. Homemade pies and bread were purchased from local housewives. All varieties of cheese, sausage rolls and kettles of pickled fish rounded out the menu. Other than paying customers were not allowed inside the casino or near the banquet table. Gertrudis employed a string of bouncers who would cripple a man or kill him as quick as they'd squish a bedbug.

Very often, Gertrudis' place would come alive with fancy balls attended to by officers attached to the Mexican garrison and many influential and notable society snobs came from miles around to gamble at her establishment. Some, curiosity seekers, just wanted to see for themselves, New Mexico's undisputed gambling queen. It was indeed a formidable army of gamblers who sallied forth to fill the tills at Gertrudis' place. Gertrudis' fallen angles were provided with hand-tooled belts in which they cached derringers. Her prostitutes were instructed to use these guns if someone got out of hand, or refused to pay the going price of six bits.

The game of monte referred to a hill of cards left after a certain number had been dealt from a Spanish deck. The suits were clubs, swords, suns and cups with ten cards in each deck - ace to seven, plus jack, horse in place of queen, and king. The game's outcome was by pure luck. It was played on a table, blanketed with green or red, divided into four squares. The banker (usually Gertrudis Barcelo) held the pack face down, drew two cards from the bottom and placed them on the "bottom layout", the lower two squares. Two cards were then drawn from the top and placed on the "top layout". Bets were placed on individual cards. The pack was turned face up and if the card in sight, the "gate" was of the same suit as either of those in the top layout, the banker paid all bets on that layout. If the gate was of the same suit as either card in the bottom layout, the banker also paid that. If there was no card of the same suit as the gate in either or both layouts the banker won.

An enterprising writer for the New Orleans PICAYUNE, by the name of George Wilkins, mistakenly wrote in his NARRATIVE OF THE TEXAN SANTA FE EXPEDITION of 1841, that she was not Spanish, but French. He called her Madame Tule, or Toulouse, and said she was considered more handsome than beautiful and that she set the fad of dress to the belles of Santa Fe. Matt Field, an nomadic actor, met the famous Senora Toulous in 1839 and was astonished by her genius in handling cards. He wrote: "A female was dealing and had you looked in her countenance for any symptom by which to discover how the game stood, you would have turned away unsatisfied; for calm seriousness was alone discernible and the cards fell from her fingers as steadily as through she was handling only a knitting needle."

Other writers recorded that she was held in high esteem by U.S. Army officers, while the poor looked upon her with admiration. There was never a move by lawmakers to delegalize gambling during her tenure in Santa Fe. Historian Paul Horgan thought in his THE CENTURIES OF SANTA FE (1965) that she alerted U.S. officers to the Mexican-Indian conspiracy of December 1846, having heard the scheme in her gambling casino. Obviously, not all of Madame Tule's biographers were complimentary. Some pointed out that although she was married to Jose Sisneros y Lucero, she carried on shameful affairs with many leading politicos. She was the known mistress of General Manuel Armijo, governor of New Mexico. According to church records in Tome, Valencia County, New Mexico, a Dona Dolores Herrero Barcelo had two daughters one of which was Gertrudis Barcelo, who married Manuel Antonio Sisneros at Tome, June 20, 1823. From accounts of the time, La Tules ran her gambling hall until her death. Records at the Catholic church say she was laid to rest in Santa Fe, January 17, 1852. Various reports by her biographers have repeated verbatim that her funeral was lavish - some say $1600 for spiritual services, another $1000 paid to the candles alone. But the church fees were evidently calculated in pesos and if the peso at the time was worth 25 cents, La Tules' family got off with $400. Nevertheless, La Tules was in death, the same as in life, the undisputed "The Gambling Queen of Santa Fe." Her only sin per se was that she provided every available solace for citizens of a drab New Mexico town, from gambling to whiskey and for an additional six bits, a buxom lass.

Only the names of the notorious, or, in some cases, the most humane of the good-time queens, like Madame La Tules have remained preserved for prosperity.