[adapted]

by
Stephen Crane

I

The large Pullman train was moving forward quickly with such smooth and steady movement that a quick look from the window seemed simply to show that the plains of Texas were flowing to the east. Huge flat areas of green grass, dull-colored areas of mesquite and cactus, small groups of wooden houses, woods of light and young trees, all were moving to the east, moving over the horizon, a cliff.

A newly married couple had got on this train at San Antonio. The man’s face was red from many days in the wind and sun, and because of his new black clothes his brick-coloured hands were always moving in a very nervous way. From time to time he looked down carefully at his clothes. He sat with a hand on each knee, like a man waiting in a barber’s shop. The looks he gave to other passengers were quick and shy.

The bride was not pretty, nor was she very young. She wore a dress of blue soft wool, with small pieces of velvet here and there, and with many metal buttons. She kept twisting her head to look at her puffed sleeves, very stiff, straight, and high. They embarrassed her. It was very clear that she had cooked, and that she expected to cook, because it was her duty. The blushes caused by the careless stares of some passengers as she had entered the car were strange to see on this plain, lower-class face, which was set in calm, almost without feeling, lines.

They were clearly very happy. “Ever been in a parlor car before?” he asked, smiling with joy.

“No,” she said; “I never was. It’s fine, isn’t it?”

“Great. And then, after a while, we’ll go to the diner, and get a big meal. Finest meal in the world. It costs a dollar.”

“Oh, do they?” said the bride. “Charge a dollar? Why, that’s too much — for us — isn’t it, Jack?”

“Not this trip, anyway,” he answered bravely. “We are going to do the whole thing.”

Later, he told her about the train. “You see, it’s a thousand miles from one end of Texas to the other, and this train goes straight across it, and it only stops four times.”

He felt proud as an owner. He pointed out to her the very bright parts of the coach, and, in fact, her eyes opened wider as she looked at the sea-green patterned velvet, the shining brass, silver, and glass, the wood that shone dark and bright like the surface of a pool of oil. At one end a bronze figure strongly held a support for a separate room, and at good places on the ceiling were paintings in olive green and silver.

In the minds of the pair, their surroundings showed the joy of their wedding that morning in San Antonio. This was the place of their new home, and the man’s face, in particular, shone with joy that made him look silly to the negro porter. This man at times watched them from far away with an amused and proud grin. At other times he bullied them cleverly in ways that did not make it clear to them that they were being bullied. He quietly used all the ways of the strongest kind of looking down on people. He mistreated them, but of this mistreatment they had little knowledge, and they quickly forgot that, from time to time, a number of travellers stared at them and made fun of them. In the past there was supposed to be something very funny in their situation.

“We will arrive in Yellow Sky at 3.42,” he said, looking with love into her eyes.

“Oh, are we?” she said, as if she didn’t know it.

To show surprise at what her husband said was part of her being a kind wife. She took a little silver watch from a pocket, and as she held it in front of her, and looked at it closely with a frown, the new husband’s face brightened.

“I bought it in San Anton’ from a friend of mine,” he told her happily.

“It’s seventeen minutes past twelve,” she said, looking up at him with a kind of shy and clumsy flirting.

A passenger, noticing this act, grew very sarcastic, and winked at himself in one of the many mirrors.

At last they went to the dining car. Two rows of Black waiters in bright white suits watched them come in with interest, and also with the calm, of men who had been warned before. The pair were given to a waiter who was happy to guide them through their meal. He looked at them with the manner of a fatherly pilot, his face bright with kindness. The looking-down manner mixed with the usual respect was not clear to them. And yet as they returned to their coach they showed in their faces a feeling of escape.

To the left, miles down a long purple hill, was a little thin line of mist, where the Rio Grande moved, making a sad sound. The train was approaching it at an angle, and the point was Yellow Sky. Soon it was clear that as the distance from Yellow Sky grew shorter, the husband became more and more restless. His brick-red hands were more and more noticeable. Occasionally he was even not paying attention and seemed far away when the bride leaned forward and spoke to him.

In fact, Jack Potter was beginning to feel the weight of what he had done, like a heavy stone. He, the town-marshal of Yellow Sky, a man known, liked, and feared in his area, an important person, had gone to San Antonio to meet a girl he thought he loved, and there, after the usual prayers, had actually got her to marry him without asking Yellow Sky about any part of it. He was now bringing his bride before a community that was innocent and did not expect this.

Of course, people in Yellow Sky married as they liked, following a common custom, but so strong was Potter’s thought of his duty to his friends, or of their idea of his duty, or of an unspoken rule which does not control men in these things, that he felt he was very bad. He had done a very strange crime. Face to face with this girl in San Antonio, and pushed by his sudden feeling, he had rushed over all the social fences. At San Antonio he was like a man hidden in the dark. A knife to cut any duty to friends, any rule, was easy for him to use in that faraway city. But the hour of Yellow Sky, the hour of daylight, was coming.

He knew well that his marriage was an important thing to his town. Only the burning of the new hotel would be more important. His friends would not forgive him. He had often thought about whether to tell them by telegraph, but a new fear had come over him. He was afraid to do it. And now the train was hurrying him toward a scene of surprise, joy, and blame. He looked out of the window at the line of mist moving slowly in toward the train.

Yellow Sky had a kind of brass band which played badly, to the joy of the people. He laughed without joy as he thought of it. If the citizens could dream of his coming with his bride, they would march the band at the station, and walk with them, with cheers and laughing congratulations, to his mud-brick home.

He decided that he would use all the ways to go fast and plains skills in making the journey from the station to his house. Once inside that safe place, he could call out some kind of spoken message, and then not go among the citizens until they had time to lose a little of their excitement.

The bride looked at him with worry. “What’s worrying you, Jack?”

He laughed again. “I’m not worried, girl. I’m only thinking of Yellow Sky.”

She turned red when she understood.

A feeling that both were guilty came into their minds, and made a gentle kindness grow. They looked at each other with eyes softly shining. But Potter often laughed the same nervous laugh. The blush on the bride’s face seemed to never go away.

The person who hurt the feelings of Yellow Sky watched closely the land going by fast.

“We’re nearly there,” he said.

Soon the porter came and said that Potter’s home was near. He held a brush in his hand, and, with his proud look gone, he brushed Potter’s new clothes, as Potter slowly turned this way and that way. Potter took out a coin with difficulty, and gave it to the porter as he had seen others do. It was a hard and awkward job, like that of a man putting a shoe on his first horse.

The train worker took their bag, and, as the train began to slow, they moved forward to the covered platform of the train car. Soon the two engines and their long line of cars rushed into the Yellow Sky station.

“They have to take water here,” said Potter, in a tight voice, and in a sad tone like someone announcing a death. Before the train stopped, he had looked along the length of the platform, and he was glad and surprised to see there was no one on it but the station agent, who, with a slightly quick and worried look, was walking toward the water tanks. When the train had stopped, the porter got off first and put in place a little temporary step.

“Come on, girl,” said Potter, in a rough voice.

As he helped her down, they each laughed in a fake way. He took the bag from the porter, and told his wife to hold onto his arm. As they moved away quickly, with a guilty look he saw that they were unloading the two trunks, and also that the station agent, far ahead, near the baggage car, had turned, and was running toward him, making signs. He laughed, and moaned as he laughed, when he noticed the first effect of his married happiness on Yellow Sky. He held his wife’s arm firmly to his side, and they ran away. Behind them the porter stood laughing foolishly.

II

The California Express on the Southron Railway was expected at Yellow Sky in twenty-one minutes. There were six men at the bar of the Weary Gentleman saloon. One was a salesman, who talked a lot and fast; three were Texans, who did not want to talk then; and two were Mexican sheep-herders, who did not usually talk in the Weary Gentleman saloon. The bartender’s dog lay on the wooden sidewalk that went in front of the door. His head was on his paws, and he looked sleepily here and there with the careful watch of a dog that is kicked sometimes.

Across the sandy street were some bright green grass patches, so good to look at among the sand that burned near them in the hot sun, that they made you wonder. They looked exactly like the grass mats used to show lawns on the stage. At the cooler end of the train station a man without a coat sat in a chair tipped back and smoked his pipe. The newly cut bank of the Rio Grande curved near the town, and beyond it there was a great plum-colored plain of mesquite.

Except for the busy drummer and his friends in the bar, Yellow Sky was half asleep. The newcomer leaned easily on the bar, and told many stories with the confidence of a poet who has come to a new place.

“And at the moment that the old man fell down the stairs, with the chest of drawers in his arms, the old woman was coming up with two buckets of coal, and, of course — — ”

The drummer’s story was stopped by a young man who suddenly came to the open door. He shouted —

“Scratchy Wilson is drunk, and he has started shooting with both hands.”

The two Mexicans right away put down their glasses, and walked out of the back door of the bar.

The salesman, innocent and joking, answered —

“All right, old man. Suppose he has. Come and have a drink, anyway.”

But the information had made such a clear mark in every head in the room, that the drummer had to see how important it was. All had become sad at once.

“Say,” he said, confused, “what is this?”

His three friends made the first sign to make a fine speech, but the young man at the door spoke before them.

“It means, my friend,” he answered, as he came into the bar, “that for the next two hours this town won’t be a safe place.”

The bartender went to the door, and locked it and blocked it. Reaching out of the window, he pulled in heavy wooden window shutters and blocked them. Right away a serious, church-like darkness filled the place. The salesman was looking from one to another.

“But wait,” he shouted, “what is this, anyway? You don’t mean there is going to be a fight with guns?”

“Don’t know if there will be a fight or not,” answered one man seriously. “But there will be some shooting — some good shooting.”

The young man who had warned them waved his hand. “Oh, there will be a fight, for sure, if any one wants it. Anybody can get a fight out there in the street. There is a fight just waiting.”