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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***

THE AMAZING MADAME VESTAL

A popular conception of the of the female's role in the Old West is that she was a madame, prostitute, manipulator, harbored on-the-dodge outcasts and undesirables, or was a hard-working pioneer woman or schoolmarm. It is a legendary concept that there were very few petticoat gamblers, when in fact, a goodly number of ladies played poker or showed their proficiency at banking or bucking faro. Some even frequented establishments that catered exclusively to men. The few women who have been acclaimed in magazines and books are personified by the Poker Alices, the Poker Nells, Gertrudis Barcelos, Madame Moustaches, and the Belle Starrs of frontier eclat.

But for some uncanny reason, another gambling lady, more lovely, more glamorous than any of the flamboyant aforementioned female gamblers, has been ignored by hack writers in the recitals of the old west. Of the many lady gamblers who trekked the frontier in search of the elusive siren, gold, via the games of chance, Lurline Monte Verde shares equal billing with Poker Alice and Gertrudis Narcelo in frontier history as the best lady gamblers in the Old West.

Among the assorted characters that arrived in Deadwood, surely the standout was Monte Verde, a slender, curvaceous girl whose talents were known in other frontier towns long before she appeared in South Dakota. Oddly, it was among these motley throng of wanted men and women running from an unhappy past, that the beauteous black-haired Lurline's ultimate destiny was shaped.

Deadwood was then, (1876--1878) wilder and woollier than most of the towns strewn along the creeks and gulches; heavily loaded with freight outfits, stagecoaches, riders and rip-snorting pedestrians who thronged the saloons and gambling halls; one on every corner and a half-dozen in between. Like Poker Alice and Madame Moustache, Monte Verde came to be known as a woman acute at watching the moves of other players, but her love life was as woebegone as a centipede with bunions. And like Madame Moustache and Madame Bulldog (Kitty Leary) when sweet dreams turned into nightmares, she sought solace in the bottle. And like Madame Moustache, booze sent her to boothill.

"Hurdy-gurdy" was the name generally applied to the joint bar-and-dancehall of the '80s. Although the hurdy-gurdy houses were not actually bawdy, most of the girls were eager to latch onto as much of a miner's gold dust as possible and they weren't particular what they had to do to get it.

Monte Verde preferred the card tables to the upstairs pleasure parlor. At the green felt tables travelers made easy prey. It was an easier life. Monte Verde was in her late twenties when she took up gambling as a profession, dealing cards against a contingent of the local citizenry.

She was a thing of beauty with her hourglass figure, ink-black hair, and sparkling brown eyes. In a town where violence was commonplace, and few became successful entrepreneurs, Monte Verde dealt cards in the lowliest dives to the fanciest establishments, while forging her own matriarchy.

Born Belle Siddons, on a slave plantation in Jefferson City, she was raised by parents who claimed their share of Missouri's phenomenal prosperity. She became an honor student at the Female University of Lexington. Sometime before the collapse of the Confederacy, she became a spy for the South. So enchanting and so alluring was she that Union Officers whom she met at social gatherings threw caution to the wind and whispered vital Union secrets to her.

In 1862 she was arrested and housed in a federal prison in St. Louis. In court, she openly boasted that it was she who informed Confederate general Nathan B. Forrest of Union movements which enabled him to thwart Grant's troops at the Mobile & Memphis Railway battle. Her incarceration at the Grand Street Rebel Prison, lasted a scant four months. A sympathetic governor freed her on condition that she stay out of Missouri until after the war.

When Lee surrendered, she returned to Jefferson City and married Dr. Newt Halleck, an army surgeon. They moved to Texas where the doctor and his nurse/wife opened a practice. Fate, that trouble-maker, couldn't let well enough alone; the doctor died of yellow fever. A year later she married a tinhorn card shark who taught her "the trade." When he died, she became a 21 dealer by preference, sticking to her trade until she was among the best in the West.

Wichita was one of the showcase boom towns of the West, and it was here that her gambling career excelled. The pickings were good enough to attract ranking gamblers, and the cultured, attractive brunette quickly acquired a stake and branched out on her own. Soon she operated gambling halls in Fort Hays, Ellsworth and Cheyenne. She moved to Denver in the winter of '76 and set up a big tent under the name of Madame Vestal. Since a woman gambler was a frontier rarity, men flocked to match their wits against her. Her family background would not allow her to hire the gold rush girlies that enticed men to the boudoirs of her competitors. In contrast, she advertised free drinks and a square deal.

Madame Vestal prospered in her Denver tent until rumors came drifting down the grapevine of a new gold strike in the Black Hills. Gold!" was the word, "Just sink a hole and you're belly deep in it!" Almost overnight Denver became a ghost town - the insatiable hunger for gold guiding the way to paradise. There is newspaper evidence to the effect that Madam Vestal, too, closed her place and followed the boomer population to Deadwood. According to THE BLACK HILLS PIONEER, DEADWOOD, S. D., June 8, 1876, she purchased an omnibus and made a home on wheels by furnishing it with all the creature comforts imaginable; lace curtains, a elegant couch, satin pillows and a cook stove. It was the modern, streamline mobile home of its day and time. She loaded her gambling paraphernalia aboard her home-on-wheels and headed for Deadwood. Her route was a treacherous one, across the wastelands of the Cheyenne-Deadwood coach trail, dusty and festooned with renegade Indians and highwaymen. But she made it. Six weeks after leaving Denver she triumphantly rolled her freight wagon down the muddy, noisy, main artery of Deadwood.

Why she changed her name is a matter of debate, but in Deadwood, Madame Vestal became Lurline Monte Verde. Before them stood the most beautiful woman they had ever seen in their lives, and her arrival called for a celebration Deadwood would long remember. The PIONEER said that gladdened men lifted her on their shoulders and paraded up and down the streets while hoots and hollers and gunshots filed the air. The editor gave her arrival a front page spread and made note of the fact that she was a "flawlessly groomed beauty, inviting, sultry and sensuous."

Monte Verde was doing well as proprietor of a combination bar, dance-hall and gambling joint. Her establishment, erected on Deadwood's main thoroughfare, was packed night and day. She was quite the sight, dealing 21, attired in a sequinned dress of the shade of absinthe, skillfully molded to every curve of her voluptuous body with just enough of the latter to expose about the breast line to tantalize the beast in her heterogeneous customers; official business men, professional gamblers, miners, soldiers from the nearby fort, lawmen and the lawless. The sound of bouncing dice, the clap, clap of the whirling poster boards of the roulette wheel, the laughter and clinking of glasses, attracted the likes of John Wesley Hardin and Wild Bill Hickok. But her association with Wild Bill was short lived when he was shot in the back by Jack McCall. Monte Verde's happiness too, was destined not to last long. One night, as she was dealing 21, in strutted Archie McLaughlin, broad shouldered and handsome. It was love at first sight. He gambled and lost but always came back the next night with a new bankroll. They became lovers. The PIONEER contributes the fact that he was a notorious stagecoach robber who galloped the Owl Hoot trail by day, and gambled by night. It was Monte Verde's misfortune to have fallen in love with him, and in doing so her own troubles became progressively acute.

As she had for the Confederacy, Archie's pretty spy kept her ears open about stage shipments and passed the information on to him. She befriended stage drivers who gambled at her table, the way she had Union officers, when whiskey loosened their tongues. With fair regularity the Deadwood Stage Line was robbed as a result of Monte Verde's tips. Boone May, a lawmen who left his mark in Deadwood history, got wise to their scheme and positioned himself opposite Monte Verde at various games of chance in hopes he would learn something about Archie's plundering. One night she let it slip that Archie and his bunch planned to rob a stage in Whoop-Up Canyon on the trail betwixt Deadwood and Rapid City. Boone placed armed deputies inside the coach. Under a veil of drifting dust, the stage approached a steep upgrade near Rapid City. The driver immediately noticed a cracked sapling blocking the road ahead. As he pulled to a stop, Archie and his band of renegades came scrambling out of the thorny thickets, guns leveled at the driver and passengers. "Throw down the box," a salty gent decided.... All hell broke loose.

In the ensuring gunbattle gunmen on both sides fell. Most of the bandits were killed, others wounded. The strongbox was saved and Billy Mansfield and Archie were captured. On the night of November 3, 1878 they boarded a stage in shackles and in the custody of lawdogs to stand trial in Deadwood. But while enroute a group of vigilantes intercepted them and dragged the two outlaws into a cottonwood grove and hanged them. When news of her lover's death reached Monte Verde, she was so distraught she swallowed poison. Her efforts to join her sweetheart failed and she recovered. But she shied away from crowds and became a hopeless alcoholic and visited opium dens in the Chinese district. She left Deadwood and became a wanderer. She was seen in Las Vegas, New Mexico, Tombstone and eventually San Francisco.

She was never without funds, for no matter how drunk she was, she never lost her skill as one of the best twenty-one dealers in the West. A San Francisco newspaper reported the arrest of a Belle Siddons in 1881. She was at deaths door from alcoholism. There was no follow-up story. Belle Siddons, alias Madame Vestal, alias Monte Verde was never seen or heard of again, but this amazing woman became a legend in the Old West.