The Cheyenne Daily Leader

OLD BEN HOLLIDAY.

The Famous Stage Owner Now Dying in Oregon.

A Man Well Known in Western Pioneer Circles.

How His Nose Was Once Scratched With a Gun Barrel.

PORTLAND, Ore., July 8.-Ben Holliday, of pony express and overland stage fame is dying at St. Vincent's hospital in this city of paralysis. It is thought he will die before midnight. His age is 68. His wife and children from the East are with him.

The above will be sad news indeed to many an old timer in this section. What frontiersman, hunter, trapper or early settler does not remember, and with pleasure, the big-hearted, generous and brave Ben Holliday, he who knew no such word as fail, the man who carried thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of valuables over his pony express line from St. Joseph, Mo., to San Francisco, when a trip was considered very successful if only one or two men and ten or twelve horses were killed. The stories told of the stage magnate are numerous and entertaining, sometimes sad but more frequently very humorous.

In the good old days when railroads were unknown and Indians plenty and not over friendly, Holliday frequently extended favors to his friends in the way of free transportation over one or more of his many lines. Printed matter was scarce, and passes had not yet come into common use, yet a little thing like a lack of printed matter didn't discourage old Ben. On the hat of each passenger whom he wished to travel free of charge he placed a cabalistic chalk mark which was as incomprehensible as it was impossible to imitate, but every person who wore a hat thus branded could always ride in the choicest seats of Holliday's coaches. This habit of the pioneer's was the origin of the once famous slang phrase, "Chalk your hat."

"Ben Holliday used to enjoy telling the story of one of his adventures," said Luke Voorhees yesterday. "Along about '63 Ben and his wife were together making the trip in a special coach from California. They had about $40,000 in gold of their own money hidden in the coach. Out here at Rock Creek the coach was held up by two stage robbers. Ben was invited to step out and ordered to hold up his hands. Of course he did so. Ben wore a big heavy moustache, and some of the obstreperous hairs crawling up the side of his nose tickled him so that he was soon in tortures.

"My God,' said Ben with his hands above his head, 'won't you let me scratch my nose?'

"'Keep your hands in the air,' said one of the stage robbers, significantly glancing along his double barrelled shot gun which had both hammers raised. 'If you want your nose scratched so bad I'll scratch it for you!' With that he shoved the shotgun under Ben's nose and rubbed it so vigorously that the tickle soon disappeared. The robbers did not get Ben's big lot of gold but they took his watch and whatever money Ben and his wife carried about them."