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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***

MADAME MOUSTACHE: ANGEL OF SIN

There's too much of worriment
That goes in a bonnet.
There's too much ironing
Goes into a shirt.
There's nothing that pays
For the time you waste on it.
There's nothing that lasts us
But trouble and dirt.

This old folk song of the West skillfully describes the plight of the dispirited pioneer housewife. But it is far from the full picture of the Western female - the pretty, young, high-spirited gals, fresh off the farm - runaways, who used pseudonyms to hide their identities. A few found an ambitious young merchant willing to marry. Others fell in with crooked outlaws and helped them elude the law. Some served as cover-ups for frontier vice and crime. Many found themselves in situations which they could not cope, and committed suicide. Some returned to their families back east, leaving shady pasts behind. Others rose to wealth and social dignity without so much as touching a spade to the ground or dipping a pan into a rivulet.

Only a handful became notable legends among the LADY GAMBLERS OF THE WILD WEST.

One was a brown-eyed, vivacious woman, obviously in her twenties, who stood straight and lithely muscled. She first appeared on the western scene around 1854, when she climbed from a Scaramento-Marysville stage at the Shasta House in Nevada City, California. She moved with the rapier-like grace of a gazelle. No one dreamed that, in time, she would become the legendary Madame Moustache, "The Angel of Sin."

Certainly, her story deserves a place in the saga of the golden sage. If Nevada City citizens wondered what had brought the curvaceous young girl in the brocaded blouse and black velvet dress to this dusty town, they had not long to wait. Eleanor Dumont lost no time in establishing a dazzling gambling casino where the game of 21, poker, or Vingt-et Un, could be played for high stakes. On opening night she provided gourmet food, fine wines and beer. For love-starved men, she provided a dazzling and flamboyant array of feminine pulchritude. Customers packed the place, enticed by the novelty of a sexy female dealer.

An expert card player, Eleanora began her gambling career in San Francisco, when she was Mlle Simone Jules. She worked as a croupier for the roulette game at the Bella Union dance hall. Ladies' societies took up the crusade and demanded she be banned from the gambling hall. Newspapers echoed a woman's place in the home. All this did was make the curvous brunette so titillatingly famous that prospectors, gamblers and con men flocked to the Bella Union to feast their eyes on the pretty French girl that handled the croupier. In no time, other gambling halls were bidding for her services as a croupier. Within two years she had amassed a tidy little fortune.

Nevada City in 1853 was a golden haven for gamblers, sisters of sin and distinguished card players, as well as the riffraff of the open frontier. A huge gold strike had enabled the boom camp to enjoy a prosperity that few Western towns relished.

As Madame Eleanore Dumont, she lured minors and prospectors to her table by her fabulous personality and intimating beauty. So enamored were her customers that they practically laid a crimson carpet for her. No one seemed to mind seeing their hard-earned gold dust pass into her coffers. Madame Dumont opened the door to the craft she would flourish in and inevitably influence so greatly. In the beginning, the prominent Dumont Palace prospered, partly because the proprietor was admired and respected and partly because she operated honestly and paid off all bets with a careless come-on laugh. Her gambling hall made money because she introduced practices unheard of in the West; champagne and food were free. Some historians claim it was Eleanora Dumont who introduced the free lunch counter that endured throughout the West for so many years. Nevada City was booming, and Eleanora made so much money that she was able to purchase a good deal of land in and around the city. Miners thronged to her casino every night, hoping to become millionaires at the flip of a card or the turn of a wheel. Eleanora probably would have gotten more wealth than she ever dreamed of if Dave Gates hadn't stopped in one night to try his luck at her table. He was the kind of a handsome rascal with whom a woman should eat, drink, and be wary.

Eleanora fell passionately in love with Gates. She offered him a partnership, agreeing to pay him a bountiful wage plus a percentage of the take. He accepted, and proved to be a great asset to her gambling casino. A master dealer-maker, he organized the faro and poker games and installed Keno. He ordered a mahogany roulette wheel from San Francisco. Business doubled. Gates' handsome good looks and fun-loving personality alone could conquer kingdoms.

Still, Eleanora was unquestionably the main attraction that brought miners to her saloon, reach in their pockets, and smack their money down. For a while, the love affair between Dave and Eleanora sizzled like griddlecakes. Then Dave got greedy. He insisted on a larger percentage of the profits. They quarreled like two halves of a Seidlitz powder. Finally Eleanora's Cashanova demanded she pay him fifty-percent of the profits. It left her financially strapped. Dave left Nevada City on the noon stage.

The Mademoiselle told friends that she would never again mix cards with love because there were too many Jokers in the deck. She tried to put up a front that she didn't care, but every time the door opened her eyes veered to see if it was Gates coming through the batwings. It never happened. Then one day she got word that he was killed over a card game in San Francisco. She was heartbroken. Dumont Palace didn't survive her heartbreak. Six months of hitting the sauce left her broke and despondent. Wracked with anxiety, she sold the place and left Nevada City for good.

For a year she staggered from bar to bar, sitting in at gambling tables in one boom town or another. Her idea of a balanced diet was a whiskey in each hand. By now her once lovely face showed lines of misery and despondency. She became belligerent. She carried two small derringers and, as several of the boys learned, Mademoiselle could use them with amazing dexterity. And then something strange happened to the once-beautiful Eleanora. Overnight, a thin, dark fuzz appeared above her upper lip. Each day it got thicker. It was this fuzz that prompted John Bagby to remark to a friend, "I think I'll go to Madame Moustache's place for a game of Vingt-et Un. " The sobriquet became popular and the fame of Madame Moustache grew. Her new combination gambling casino and brothel enticed nightly customers. When the boom broke, she gathered her girls, her money, and journeyed her "caravan of sin" to every mining camp and cattle town in the West. One of her soiled doves was Martha Canary, who was later immortalized in Ned Buntline's dime novels as Calamity Jane. When Madame Moustache's traveling "Cat" house was attacked by Indians, she led her girls in a fight that sent the startled savages running for their lives. Ned Buntline heard about this magnanimous feat and wrote the story for an eastern newspaper. Instantly, Madame Moustache became a celebrity back east.

After twelve years, Madame Moustache abandoned her profitable caravan and announced she was through with sin. She took her savings and opened up a gambling hall in Fort Bennett. Where gamblers once flocked to see the beauteous brunette of the card tables, curiosity seekers now came to gape at the lady with the moustache. One tough miner boomed, "Hell, she would be a beauty if it weren't for that moustache!" This must have cut Mademoiselle deep. She announced that she was giving up gambling and the brothels. She sold her business and bought a ranch near Carson City, Nevada. The most serious problem a petticoat pioneer had to face was life without a man. Although she was still carrying the torch for Dave Gates, he was dead and smooth-talking Colonel Carruthers was alive. He laid his cards on the table, but he had another deck up his sleeve; when the hot coals of the honeymoon subsided, Madame Moustache realized that she had signed, in a drunken stupor, the ranch and fine herd of cattle over to a man who was oilier than a kerosene lamp. Unbeknownst to the Colonel, when he walked out on Madame Moustache, it would be his last act of deceit. She followed him outside and blew his head off with a scattergun. Neighbors found him in a ditch two days later. Madame Moustache was gone. Such is the nature of feminine egoism.

The Lucky Boy strike made Bodie, California the hottest town in the West. The crack of a pistol sent many a card cheater squirming in death. Bawdy dance hall girls were plentiful and too often ribald songs ended with a flash of knife and sudden death. Madame Moustache turned up there. She strolled over to a green felt table where vingt-et Un was being played. This game had always been good to her in the past. But not this time. With her last dollar she bought a bottle of whiskey, and staggered out the door.

On the morning of November 19, 1879, a curious dance hall girl who wondered why Madame Moustache hadn't been around lately, opened her door. There she lay spread-eagle on the bed, her brown eyes wide open and staring into oblivion. Beside her on a table was a bottle of rat poison. Her fame in those days was great enough to draw a decent crowd to her funeral. She was buried on a bank overlooking Bodie. There was implacable, sad silence as the body of Mlle Simone Jules, alias Eleanora Dumont, alias Madame Moustache, once the toast of gambling halls from Kansas City to San Francisco, was lowered into the grave and into infinity.

People cleaning up her room found a note directed to the undertaker. It read, simply: "Do not shave off my moustache."