In the penultimate paragraph of the first part, as the Potters' short-lived honeymoon aboard the train comes to an end, Crane uses a simile that foreshadows the story's dramatic ending.
“They have to take water here,” said Potter, from a constricted throat and in mournful cadence, as one announcing death.
In the simile, Crane compares Potter's tone of voice to that of someone sharing tragic news. The description gives the impression that Potter speaks the sentence with an anguished croak. The sound of his voice underlines the character's reluctance to embrace his new domestic life, share the big news of his marriage with his community, and introduce his friends to the bride. Potter is happy to be married, but nevertheless frightened by the big change he finds himself on the precipice of.
The simile also serves to foreshadow the ending, in which Potter comes very close to dying at the hands of Scratchy Wilson. Although the reader does not expect that something so dramatic will come of his return to Yellow Sky, Potter's deep-seated disinclination to get off the train and face the town foreshadows that he will face some sort of challenge. In the story's three subsequent parts, Crane drags out the impending confrontation between Scratchy Wilson and Potter, which gradually becomes inevitable in the eyes of the reader. When Scratchy Wilson's violent rage later seizes on Potter as its target, Potter's anxiety about disembarking the train acquires a new angle of significance.
