Maybe I missed something, but, at the beginning of the film, a) the stagecoach, TROTTING, passes George Segal WALKING on the way into town with Yul Brynner, b) Segal finally gets into town, goes to his farm, goes into town, gets in a hassle with the townfolk et al and c) the stagecoach FINALLY arrives with Brynner who decides to stay.
Did it get lost? "Close Encounter"? Time warp?
How do U know the stage didn't stop somewhere else along the way?
A hydrocephalic takes pleasure in milking his cranial harp.
I suspect that the beginning of the film was originally intended to be in a different order with Yul Brynner only appearing after Matt's arrival in town and Medford's death.
It's possible that there was concern that the star of the show didn't appear until several minutes into the film so Brynner's stagecoach ride was inserted into the titles (some of the title footage may have been shot subsequently). Or possibly the whole of Matt's arrival was meant to be a pre-credit sequence which seemed too long.
The re-ordering created the problem of the huge gap in real time between the stage coach passing Segal and the arrival of Brynner. In order to make the time seem more compressed there were a couple of lines changed/inserted into the meeting scene to make it appear that Matt's arrival and Medford's death was only the previous night but the relevant words are spoken when Hingle is off camera so that no new footage would have to be shot. It doesn't solve the problem entirely but minimised it as much as possible.
I also suspect that there were other cuts to shorten the running time as some scenes seem to start later that might seem logical and other things happen off-screen which you might expect to see at least some of - Medford's death being one although that might have been because it might have lost sympathy for Matt.