JadziaDax

There was a common expression in the 1860's and later--"to hell and gone." It meant that things were in total ruin. Around the 1890's, expressions such as "hellbent for election(or leather or breakfast) were common.
It has been argued that the phrase had its origin in dice games, since dice have been called bones since the fourteenth century at the latest, for the good reason that they were originally carved from bone.

The more probable origin is from the dinner table. The oldest version of the expression is to find bones in something, meaning to find a difficulty or objection in some course of action. The first example is from one of the Paston letters of 1459. It seems to have been linked especially with soup: to have a bone in that certainly presented difficulties in eating it. To find no bones in something meant that you had no problems or difficulties. The idiom seems to have grown out of that.