Along the Rio Grande (1916); Watching and Waiting On the Border (1917)

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   Two Tex-Mex books, neither with a "taco."

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ALONG THE RIO GRANDE
by Tracy Hammond Lewis
Lewis Publishing Co., NY
1916

Pg. 50:
   "What is the difference between a tortilla and an enchilado?" he inquired.
   "You simple thing," she responded, "an enchilado is bigger and more in it."
   The man from the East became interested at once.
   "A tortilla then, I take it," he said, "is the young and if allowed to grow will develop into the enchilado."
   My attention was distracted from the conversation at this point by the beauties of the scenery, and it was not until I reached El Paso again that I learned from an omniscient bellboy what they really were.  A tortilla, he said, was a form of Mexican bread, flat and unrisen, like a pancake.  An enchilado, on the other hand, was a little bit of everything--cheese, chopped meat and spice; with a tortilla on the outside, all of which is wrapped in a corn-husk.  Neither could be sat upon.

Pg. 120:  One proceeds along the street in the usual manner.  If it is your turn for "zipping" you look carefully at the hirsute adornment on the face of the nearest pedestrian and say "Zip" with the appropriate number appended that the whiskers call for.  You are quite a simple person if you know not that in the scale of things a mustache counts five, whiskers ten, a beard twenty, a beard resting comfortably on the wearer's chest thirty, "burnsides or "mudguards," whichever you wish to call them, forty, while a beard extending to the waist entitles one to credit of eighty.
(MUDGUARDS?  This isn't in the RHHDAS.  OED?--ed.)

Pg. 167:  ...and a dessert that sometimes goes under the name of "heavenly slush," (Pg. 168--ed.) which is made up of oranges and bananas sliced together, were served to us with the usual quota of flies.

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WATCHING AND WAITING ON THE BORDER
by Roger Batchelder
Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston
1917

Pg. 30:  Coffee, either "canned Willie" (canned beef), beans, or "slum" (stew), and hard-tack formed the usual menu.

Pg. 48:  Mess, of the eternal "tack and Willie" (hard-tack and canned beef), was at six.

Pg. 90:  The regiment owned a field-kitchen, or "slum-gun," a bulky vehicle in which food might be prepared on the march.

Pg. 191:  As I was trying to coax the tiny fire into a blaze, I saw a hand reach for my pile of wood.
   "Hey!  This is no free lunch.  Get your own wood," I remonstrated indignantly.

Pg. 197:  "Join the army and see the work," mimicked one, calling to mind the recruiting posters.