The mood of "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" feels placid on one level and tense on another. As the four parts feature different settings, and the narrative is focalized around different characters in each part, the mood shifts somewhat as the story progresses. In all of the parts, Crane drags out many scenes through detailed description of the characters or settings. This slow, measured pace plays a significant role in the intensification of the mood that occurs over the course of the story.
On the macro level, the reader experiences a certain balance between calmness and suspense in the story. While the narrator repeatedly emphasizes the stillness of the setting, the narrator also gives hints about some form of looming uncertainty towards the end of each of the four parts. In the first part, the looming uncertainty is Potter's anxiety about returning to Yellow Sky and introducing the community to his new wife. In the second part, it appears in the form of a warning that Scratchy Wilson has been drinking, which leads all the characters in the saloon to take cover. In the third part, the reader grows concerned about who Scratchy Wilson will harm—and when the answer is revealed to be Potter, the concern shifts to what will happen to the innocent newlywed as he returns home with his bride. The final part opens with the inevitable confrontation between Potter and Scratchy Wilson, the outcome of which is only revealed at the very end.
On the micro level, however, the mood varies in each of the four parts. When Potter and the bride are aboard the train in the first part, their unease makes the mood awkward, stilted, and comical. Until the news about Scratchy Wilson is announced, the mood in the second part is sleepy. As Scratchy Wilson parades around town in the third part, his behavior—that of a stereotypical Western outlaw—gives the intense mood a ridiculous tinge. The fourth part begins with a purely intense mood, but gradually becomes surprising when Potter's marriage announcement befuddles the violent troublemaker.
