The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky

I found Stephen Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" very typical and a little disappointing. Okay, I know that Professor Hepworth told us in class on Wednesday that the cowboy story is known to all. If you've been exposed to one cowboy story, you've been exposed to them all. I think Crane's writing style is great, but the storyline didn't have the "awesome" factor that I was anticipating.

The story was split into four parts. The first depicting the anxiety of the two love birds approaching a town which is oblivious to the fact that their "town marshall" went off to San Anton to marry a foreign woman. The pair are initially described as two seemingly "rough-on-the-edges" people: the man, masculine in his worn hands and his stance, and the woman, homely in her features, "not pretty, nor was she very young." The second portion is conveying the attitudes of the Yellow Sky folk - particularly at the local saloon. This is where we hear of the local "bad guy," Scratchy Wilson, who is the nicest man when sober but the most horrendous when drunk. And consequently, when we enter the scene he is drunk and on the war path. We also find out that our protagonist, Jack Potter (the town marshall) is the one who has to deal with Scratchy Wilson. Then, we progress on to the third section where we meet Scratchy Wilson who's as drunk as a skunk wandering around Yellow Sky. We see how inhumane Scratchy is when he pesters the poor dog who's perched himself casually on the porch of the local saloon. But, trying to rile someone or something up, he decides to stare the poor pup down and then entertain himself by shooting at it. The perfect antagonist - he made me hate him in that action alone. Then, fourthly, the conclusion of this short cowboy tale was the let down for me. The raving alcoholic is not just going to be loading his guns and waiting for his enemy at his house just to say, "Oh you're married now? Well I guess we can't have our fun and fight anymore" and then the bad guy just ride off by himself, leaving the hero the victor and not even have to work for it! No, the real ending would be something to the effect of Scratchy stealing away the town marshall's misses and tying her to the train tracks for Jack to save at the last moment. Or he would capture Jack's bride and hold her captive, only for Jack to show his sharp-shooting skills and kill/wound Scratchy to put an end to his drunken stupors.

So, I know that all stories shouldn't all go the same, but it seemed like Crane got lazy. He just wanted this to stay a short story and ended up stopping short of making it a great, epic tale. This isn't the magnificent "ride off into the sunset" story; the ending was rushed and felt more like sloppy seconds of a good Western.