"The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" is an 1898 western short story by American author Stephen Crane (1871–1900). Originally published in the February, 1898 issue of McClure's Magazine, it was written in England. The story's protagonist is a Texas marshal named Jack Potter, who is returning to the town of Yellow Sky with his eastern bride. Potter's nemesis, the gunslinger Scratchy Wilson, drunkenly plans to accost the sheriff after he disembarks the train, but he changes his mind upon seeing the unarmed man with his bride.
The short story inspired a 1967 opera of the same name by Roger Nixon, and the 1952 film Face to Face.
Author
Stephen Crane was an American author born on November 1, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey who died on June 5, 1900, from tuberculosis. At the time of his death he was living in Germany. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, "He is known for being a novelist, poet, and short-story writer, best known for his novels Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) and The Red Badge of Courage (1895) and the short stories 'The Open Boat', 'The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky', and 'The Blue Hotel'".
Plot summary
I
The short story opens in a parlor car of a train traveling westward from San Antonio towards a late-nineteenth-century Texas town named Yellow Sky. In this section a couple of characters are introduced—Jack Potter, and his bride. Newly married in San Antonio, "They were evidently very happy". "The bride was not pretty, nor was she very young. She wore a dress of blue cashmere, with small reservations of velvet here and there, and with steel blue buttons abounding". Jack Potter is then described briefly as the Marshal of Yellow Sky. He is "...a man known, liked, and feared in his corner, a prominent person...". Further into chapter one, Potter is getting more and more anxious while approaching his town, as his marriage would be ill received by the community. "In San Antonio he was a man hidden in the dark. A knife to sever any friendly duty, any form, was easy to his hand in that remote city. But the hour of Yellow Sky—the hour of daylight—was approaching". The section ends with Potter and his wife stepping off the train and fleeing the scene.
II
Section two begins in the setting of a bar in Yellow Sky called the Weary Gentlemen saloon. It introduces a few more characters in the first couple sentences. "One was a salesman, who talked a great deal and rapidly; three were Texans who did not care to talk at the time; and two were Mexican sheep-herders, who did not talk as a general practice in the Weary Gentlemen saloon". In the fourth paragraph a young man appears in the doorway of the saloon and says "Scratchy Wilson's drunk, and has turned loose with both hands". The drummer isn't aware of who Scratchy Wilson is, but when the barkeeper closes the shutters and locks the door, the drummer begins asking the barkeeper questions. The barkeeper answers his questions by stating "You see, this here Scratchy Wilson is a wonder with a gun—a perfect wonder; and when he goes on the war trail, we hunt our holes—naturally. He's about the last one of the old gang that used to hang out along the river here. He's a terror when he's drunk. When he's sober he's all right—kind of simple—wouldn't hurt a fly—nicest fellow in town. But when he's drunk—whoo!". The plot of the second section is to add some rising suspense for chapter three when Scratchy Wilson appears.
III
This section is solely about Scratchy Wilson. "A man in a maroon-colored flannel shirt" and childlike red and gold boots are walking up the main street of Yellow Sky carrying a revolver. He is yelling throughout the town with a voice "that seemed to have no relation to the ordinary vocal strength of a man". This man is the drunk Scratchy Wilson, and he is in search of a fight. When Scratchy approaches the door to the saloon, he comes into contact with the bartender's dog. The dog starts to walk away from Scratchy, he yells at it, and it starts to sprint. He starts shooting at the dog, missing both times but forcing the dog to flee in a new direction. He now turns his attention to the saloon door and pounds on it with his revolver demanding to be served a drink. He becomes infuriated, no one is letting him in, so he stabs some paper into the door and shoots at it. While walking back down the main street, the name Jack Potter comes to Scratchy's mind. He goes to the house of his "ancient antagonist" and demands he come out and fight, becoming more and more enraged that Sheriff Potter is not answering him.