...yet his gang just walk brazenly down the main street without fear or trepidation, no idea of where to find Kane and presenting themselves as sitting ducks. If I was Kane I would be up on a rooftop with a Winchester. You could take out two before they reached for cover.
Okay I know it's only a movie.
I feel the same way you do about them walking down the street.
I think in order for a movie to be considered good it has to reflect the realistic actions of its characters. I find it hard to believe that a town with that many family men would want to let the peace and order they worked to create fall apart due to their cowardice in the face of a crisis. People living in small towns back then had a greater sense of community; their lives depended on cooperation and not just leaving it up to the law to ensure their safety. In reality, Marshal Kane would have had more than enough men willing to use their pistols and rifles to confront Miller's gang and either send them away or, more likely, since Frank Miller had blood in his eye, send them to their graves. Kane and the townsmen had the advantage, as you noted, of being able to pick Miller's gang off from the relative safety of the buildings along the streets.
Couple of things:
First, there are so many myths about the American West, what it was like, what people did, that it's hard separating fact from fiction. It's not at all sure that in any real western town the residents would have lined up behind a sheriff in a fight with a band of outlaws. In real life there were never any guarantees of what would happen; each situation and each town was different. Many townspeople did believe law and order was "what they paid a sheriff for" and would not have gotten into the middle of a fight. The point is, such things could go either way.
Second, in this film remember that not everybody in the town was on Kane's side. On the contrary, lots of people disliked him and liked Miller. The saloon, the hotel were full of such people, and presumably there were more. Sure, there were a lot of "good people" who supported what Kane had done but even if men had stepped forward to help him it's not as if he'd have had the whole town with him in a mass showdown. Many of Miller's friends might have taken sides with Miller and his three henchmen in such an all-out fight.
Third, a lot of people were cowed into not fighting by the argument that big businesses were looking to move into the town and making it prosperous, and that if they heard about gun play in the streets that would deter them from coming. Of course, nobody says anything about businesses' attitudes to a town that doesn't stop a band of killers from riding in, scaring a sheriff off and not having one person stand up for law and order; I don't think that would be conducive to investment either. But that was one argument used to scare people into inaction.
But as to the OP's point, I agree: alone or not, but especially alone, if I were Kane I'd have gone to a rooftop and picked at least one or two of Miller's men off as they came in. The character of Kane as written makes him seem more concerned with the appearance of needing to be fair and honorable than in simply winning a life-or-death fight against lawbreakers.
I think in order for a movie to be considered good it has to reflect the realistic actions of its characters. I find it hard to believe that a town with that many family men would want to let the peace and order they worked to create fall apart due to their cowardice in the face of a crisis.
I think that's why Miller had his guys there. If the just walked around town and did nothing the law couldn't touch them (I suppose a lynch mob could). The same was true of Miller himself, the law can't go after him until he does something. Millers men could gage what it looked like in town. It was obvious Kane was getting no help, so they told Miller it was all good when he got off the train. Otherwise they would have told him that there was a posse, they absolutely would say something if there was a posse. I'm nit sure what Miller would do at that point, but there's no way he would have marched into town if the posse was there. And Kane couldn't just nab him as he stepped off the train, Miller would have t do something.
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