In the end, suspect or not, Runyon may have felt safe to comment on the feud since he was a man of the badge. If so however, he learned the error of that line of thinking once the Ferrell-Butcher trouble erupted on nearby Big Ugly Creek in January of 1890. (Its events were eventually merged with those of the Haley-McCoy trouble in the song “The Lincoln County Crew”.) The Logan newspaper covered this event:

Albert Butcher, who was shot by Tom Ferrell near Deal’s grocery in Lincoln county, Dec. 31st, died Friday morning last. The latest report we have says that Butcher and Ferrell had been drinking and playing cards all day for a pair of pants, and there was a dispute over $1.50. Butcher got the pants and got on his horse and started home, when Ferrell caught his horse by the bridle and demanded his pants or $1.50. Butcher got down off of his horse and the shooting was done immediately. One report says that Butcher attacked Ferrell with his knife and cut one of his fingers and wounded him in the breast. Another report says that Butcher only made Ferrell loose his bridles. Dr. Hudgins, of this place, was called and operated on Butcher, and it appears that the ball, which was a .38-calibre, had entered the abdomen 1/2 inch to the right and 1/2 inch below the navel, making five wounds in the intestines. The abdominal wall was opened, the fecol matter and blood worked out, the wounds in the intestines entered, and every thing done to save the life of the patient. Dr. Hudgins is a skilled surgeon, but in this case no skill could save.

Not long after Butcher’s death — and this is the part that would’ve had a sobering effect on Deputy-Sheriff John Runyon — a mob of Logan County Butchers went to retrieve Ferrell at the county jail and carry out mob justice. The Lambert Collection offered a great eyewitness account of their “raid” on Hamlin:

There was a saloon, but I can’t recall whose it was. I saw many men and two women stagger out of it while we were there [in Hamlin]. The occasion of the drunk women was when the Butcher mob came down from Big Ugly to take Tom Ferrell out of the jail and hang him for the shooting of one of the Butcher family. Tom Ferrell was just a boy about 20 yrs. of age. He had a difficulty of some kind with one of the Butchers, and to protect his own life had shot the man. Ferrell then came to Hamlin and gave himself up. The jailor Andrew Chapman locked him in a cell for safe-keeping for they realized there would be plenty of future trouble. Sure enough in a day or so the mob came riding into town. The mob was led by Capt. Butcher and two women were along. All had shiny guns on their shoulder. They rode up the street past our house to the jail that stood behind the court house, but when they got to the jail the prisoner was gone.

A Mr. Duty told me that his father then lived on Big Ugly Creek where Mr. Ferrell lived and knew all the circumstances of the killing. He heard of the Butcher plan to hang young Ferrell, so he mounted his horse and started to Hamlin to warn the jailor to protect Ferrell. He rode his horse so hard that it fell dead and he got another horse and rode it hard, but got to Hamlin before the mob did. The jailor at once turned Ferrell out and told him to run to the woods for his life. The jailor’s brother, John Chapman, lived with him and helped care for the prisoners, so he told John to go too, and to run. Word, by way of wireless, was circulated that John and Ferrell struck for the woods with John taking the lead by many yards. He was running for his life, too.

When the mob rode into town, the street was soon empty, for everybody took to cover, and stayed out of sight for the two or three days that the mob hung around. They stayed at the Long House, the other hotel in Hamlin, but it was close to the Campbell House. In fact there was just an empty lot between the two, for it was on the same side of the street.

The mob made many trips up and down the street from the hotel to the saloon and then on a little farther to the jail. They always went as soldiers with their shiny guns on their shoulders. Most of them staggered after they made their first trip to the saloon, and the men always had to keep the women from falling. They stayed so drunk. After two or three days they left as suddenly as they had come, and then John and Tom Ferrell came back to the jail. Ferrell was tried in court and found innocent by way of self defense. Mr. Duty told me that Mr. Ferrell was always in fear of his life after that. He was postmaster at Dolly in Lincoln County, but he lived a miserable life, and in constant fear. They said that Mr. Ferrell was a good and honorable man, and was not to blame for the deed that left him an unhappy man.

Surely, Runyon was horrified to witness this whole fiasco. If a mob could take over the county seat and march through town sloshed and armed with weapons, how safe was he — a mere deputy-sheriff — in isolated Harts?