Three-Ten to Yuma
1953 short story
"Three-Ten to Yuma" is a short story written by Elmore Leonard that was first published in Dime Western Magazine, a 1950s pulp magazine, in March 1953. It is one of the few Western stories to have been adapted to the screen twice, in 1957 and in 2007.
Plot summary
Paul Scallen, a deputy marshal, is escorting train robber and wanted fugitive Jimmy Kidd to Tucson to stand trial. The two travel to a small town called Contention, where they prepare to catch a train to Yuma later in the afternoon. The two hole up in a hotel room close to the train station with the help of Mr. Timpey, a representative of Wells Fargo sent to ensure Kidd is brought to justice for stealing the bank's money.
Scallen and Kidd wait in the hotel room and spend the next few hours discussing Scallen's pay and motivations. Scallen sees several men waiting outside, who are revealed by Kidd to be his gang, who have been tracking them in secret. Their leader, Kidd's loyal second-in-command Charlie Prince, asks after Kidd, who assures Charlie that he will soon be released and urges Scallen to do so to avoid bloodshed. Scallen refuses and the two continue to wait for the train.
The public source identifies “Three-Ten to Yuma” as 1953 short story. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Three-Ten, Yuma and short.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7797235. VIAF identifies the subject as 181736220. The Library of Congress control number is no2009041553. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1953, 1957 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Three-Ten to Yuma” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.