Bride Comes to Yellow Sky

This story mainly tells about a town marshal bringing his bride to the town of Yellow Sky. It happens at the time when the Old West is being civilized in a slow pace. At the end of the story, the seemingly inevitable gunfight, which is one feature of the west, is prevented, and the reader senses that all such gunplay is a thing of the past, that in fact Crane is describing the "end of an era."
The story concerns man’s interaction with his environment.
It begins with the description of the “great Pullman” train that is luxuriously equipped. Everything on the train is new and foreign to the newlyweds. We can see the self-conscious uneasiness throughout the passage. Jack’s hands "perform" in a "most conscious fashion," and his bride is "embarrassed" by her puff sleeves. The couple are so self-conscious and intimidated by their surroundings that the black porter "bullies" them, regards them with "an amused and superior grin," and generally "oppresses" them, treatment that they also receive from the black waiter, who "patronizes them."   As the train nears Yellow Sky, Jack becomes "commensurately restless," primarily because he knows that he has committed an "extraordinary crime" by going "headlong over all the social hedges" and ignoring his "duty to his friends," members of an "innocent and unsuspecting community." Marshals in frontier towns apparently do not marry because they need to be free of domestic entanglements. Because Jack and his bride sense their "mutual guilt," they "slink" away from the train station and walk rapidly to his home, a "safe citadel" from which Jack can later emerge to make his peace with the community.
At the same time, six men including the Eastern "drummer," sit drinking at the bar. While the drummer tells a story, another man appears at the door to announce that Scratchy Wilson is drunk and "has turned loose with both hands." The "innocent" drummer, whom Crane describes as a "foreigner," is told that there will be some shooting, that...