The Gunfight Over an Egg.

The most tragic food story I know occurred in 1879 in the mining town of Shakespeare, near Lordsburg in New Mexico's southwest corner. It involved 25-year-old Ross Woods, manager of the local stagecoach office.

He had a room on the second floor of the Stratford Hotel, which his mother ran. One morning, Woods came down to the dining room for breakfast.

The usual guests were on hand, plus some miners and cowboys, when a local character entered and took a table. He wore two six-guns belted at the waist, and his name was Bean Belly Smith. The nickname supposedly came from his protruding stomach.

At age 35, Smith was a small man known for his mean disposition. His father had been the Confederate governor of Virginia.

Smith sat down and rudely began demanding service. The waiter came from the kitchen and placed before each patron a steak, oatmeal and biscuits.

It was about then that young Woods descended the stairs and took an empty table.

He nodded to several men but ignored Smith. Town gossips said Woods had been seeing Smith's wife on the sly, and some kind of explosion was due.

The waiter now served Woods the standard breakfast, but with something extra. On a small plate by itself was a fried egg.

The other diners stared in astonishment. In this rough mining town, eggs were scarce and a delicacy.

"Hey!" yelled Smith angrily to the waiter. "How come he gets an egg and we don't?"

"Mrs. Woods only had one egg, and she told me to give it to Ross," came the trembling reply.

Smith then marched over and told Woods that he better not eat that egg. "You think you can have anything you want, don't you?"

Everyone in the room seemed to know Smith really meant his wife and not the egg.

Woods would not accept the public insult. Being unarmed, he quietly left the room and went upstairs. A few moments later, he returned with a .58-caliber gun and upon seeing Smith fired at him.

The bullet missed, giving Smith time to draw his own gun. In the next instant, he shot and killed young Woods, who fell to the dining-room floor. Then Smith calmly sat down and ate the fried egg.

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