Had Lot Huntington not stolen a horse called Brown Sal he would have lived longer than 28 years.
Well, that’s speculation. Scofflaws such as Huntington often died before their time, and the young man had run afoul of the law on many an occasions. At the time of the horse theft, he was already on the run, leaving Utah for California after stealing $800 from an Overland Mail strongbox at Townsend’s Stable in Salt Lake City.
Accompanying Huntington was his accomplice in that crime, John Smith, and another of his outlaw friends, Moroni Clawson.
The three men on the run had also participated in a crime a number of weeks earlier —a crime about which the law in Utah cared little, and had not seriously sought the miscreants.
Attack On The Governor
A gang of ruffians led by Wood Reynolds, had attacked and beaten John Dawson, governor of the territory for less than a month. Dawson was fleeing Salt Lake City in the dead of night after threats of punishment for allegedly making untoward advances toward his landlady, who happened to be Reynolds’s aunt.
The rowdies left Dawson lying in his misery at the Mountain Dell stage station. The governor later wrote to the Deseret News that the men had applied “a most serious violence to me, wounding my head badly in many places, kicking me in the loins and right breast until I was exhausted.”
The governor named his assailants, and said “it should be the unremitting duty of the people of Salt Lake City to bring to speedy trial and condign punishment.”
The people of the city were not particularly interested.
A couple weeks later, Huntington and Smith stole the money from the Overland Mail and hit the trail out of the valley. On the way, Huntington happened upon Brown Sal, saddled and tied to a fence rail in the town of West Jordan, where the horse’s owner was in an evening conference with local leaders.
Huntington was familiar with Brown Sal; the mare being well known in the area for her speed. Had he resisted the temptation, he may well have escaped.
Brown Sal’s owner, John Bennion, was determined to get his horse back. And he knew just the man for the job—his friend Porter Rockwell.
Rockwell, a Deputy United States Marshal and a feared gunman accused of operating outside the law as often as not, assembled a posse and rode long and hard to make up for the outlaws’ head start of some 24 hours.
Rockwell knew his quarry well—he was a long-time friend and associate of Dimick Huntington, Lot’s father, and had known Lot all his life. Still, he meant to arrest the horse thief and return Brown Sal to her rightful owner.
Next Stop, Faust’s Station
At the stage station at Fort Crittenden (known previously as Camp Floyd, but recently renamed when Secretary of War John B. Floyd, for whom it had been named, abandoned his post to throw in with the rebel Confederacy), Rockwell commandeered a coach and team and drove on toward the next stop, Faust’s Station.
The posse arrived before dawn. Rockwell posted his men around the station yard to await daylight. When Doc Faust, the station keeper, came out in the morning cold to attend to chores, Rockwell hailed him, learned of the men he was after were in the station, and sent Faust back inside to tell them to surrender.
Huntington refused. He exited the station building, gun in hand, and walked to the corral where Brown Sal was penned. There, he either swung aboard the mare bareback or concealed himself behind the horse as he led her out. Rockwell ordered him to give it up, but Huntington instead took aim. Rockwell was faster, and unleashed a storm of buckshot.
Gut Shot With Eight Slugs
Here’s how the killing was recorded in the Journal History of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: “Huntington drew his revolver where upon he was shot in the belly with 8 slugs cutting the arteries to pieces. Huntington fell with part of his body in the corral and one leg outside the corral. He bled to death in four minutes.”
John Smith and Moroni Clawson had the good sense to surrender, only to be returned to face the law in Salt Lake City, where they were both shot and killed under suspicious circumstances, purportedly while trying to escape.
Some sources claim Huntington was buried beneath a wooden marker carved with, “Lot Huntington, Outlaw.”
R. B. Miller can be reached at WriterRodMiller@gmail.com
