This article appeared in the "Clarion Ledger" June 18, 1967, written by                                             Clifton Hunter

      


      Mule Beats Horse in '76 Rienzi Race


Nowhere in all the dusty annals of equine history can one find a story more
fantastic or unique than that of Old Salem, the pacing mule.  His color was
sorrel with his off hind leg socked almost to the hock.  A very unusual
marking for a mule, but Old Salem was no ordinary mule.  He was a natural
born pacer, and he had tremendous speed in that gait.
Old Salem first saw the light of day on Tom Hinton's Sycamorah   Plantation
on the Hatchie River near the little town of Rienzi, Miss.    His birth was
an accident.  On Halloween night in 1872 a bunch of teenage Rienzi boys out
for a night of mischief turned out the jack on a neighboring plantation. 
The next morning the jack was found in the Sycamorah pasture with Tom
Hinton's band of blooded brood mares.  And, as luck would have it, Highland
Fling, one of his best brood mares was in heat that night.  Highland Fling
was a pacer, and in her racing days was a much feared campaigner on the
harness tracks in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee.

In the spring of 1875, Old Salem was broken to harness, and put to work
with the other mules tilling fertile acres of Sycamorah Plantation.  
Occasionally, one of the Negro field hands would hitch him to a buggy on a
Sunday Afternoon to go courting the neighborhood colored girls.  Soon Old
Salem became the favorite of the Sycamorah colored boys, for he was a
natural pacer, and the race-loving boys soon found he was as fleet of foot
as the white-tail deer that sped through the  black gum forest of the
nearby Tippah Hills.  In the short span of a few months, Old Salem had been tested by every colored boy's buggy horse in Alcorn, Prentiss, and Tippah Counties. By the end of the summer of 1876 Old Salem had fed dust to every fast buggy horse to challenge him.

Now Tom Hinton was a great hand for playing practical jokes, and it
occurred to him it would be great fun to trick the Negro boys into matching
their pride and joy unbeknownst to a really fast horse straight off the
harness track.  So he got in touch with a friend that lived across the
state line in Henderson, Tenn., one Dutch Heffner by name.  Now he owned a
nine-year-old bay gelding by the name of Dancing Wonder that was a trotting fool and a rugged competitor on any harness track.   It was arranged for Dutch Heffner's twenty-year-old son Fritz to visit his uncle who lived in Rienzi and to drive the famous trotter into Rienzi hitched to a light buggy.

Well, Fritz Heffner arrived in Rienzi on a Friday afternoon, and trotted
his horse smartly about town letting it be known he wasn't adverse to a
good buggy race. The news wasn't long in reaching the sporting boys at Sycamorah, and the match was made for Sunday afternoon to be run on the Corinth to Rienzi highroad just south of Forked Deer River.  The race was for one mile and the colored folks around Rienzi had everything they owned or could borrow bet on that sorrel mule.

The race was set for 3 o'clock.  By race time the mile stretch of road was
lined on both sides with buggies, carriages, and wagons.  It was like the
4th of July races at Corinth. The race started and the crowd whooped with excitement.  For the first quarter mile the race was nip and tuck, then Old Salem began to take the lead.   By the halfway point Old Salem was nearly a length in the lead, and going like a sorrel streak of light.

Dancing Wonder's driver, Fritz Heffner, was young and not too well
experienced.  And in the excitement of the race and his anxiety at being
behind at that point, let Dancing Wonder break his stride.  By the time
young Heffner got his horse pulled down from a gallop and back into his
gait, Old Salem was twenty yards ahead, and still going like sixty.
Well, the mule won the race right handily by a wide margin, and a few sore
losers in the crowd muttered darkly that young Heffner had thrown the race. Tom Hinton, his mule, and his fool joke was roundly cussed that day by
the darkies of Sycamorah and Rienzi were delirious with joy.
 

Now, when Dutch Heffner heard the results of that race, he was fit to be
tied.  When it comes to racing, no darn mule ever foaled could match a
horse for speed.  He was certain sure Dancing Wonder had been sponged or
doped.  He had the horse examined by three different vets, and when they
could find nothing amiss, he drew five thousand dollars from his bank, and
headed for Sycamorah on the next train with his hackles up and fire in his
eyes.  Why he would be the laughing stock of the whole darn country.  It
would be snowing in hell when he listened to another one of Tom Hinton's
darn fool practical jokes.

Well, Dutch Heffner had no trouble getting his rematch, for the colored
boys of Sycamorah were now as high on their mule as a sugarpine in the
Tippah Hills.  The match was made for the best two out of three one-mile
heats.  The winner of each heat to get one hundred dollars, and the winner
of the match to get a thousand dollars.  The race was to be run on the
second Saturday of October,   which was just a little over a fortnight
away, on the harness track at Corinth, one of the finest trotting tracks in
the state of Mississippi.

The day of the big race dawned bright and sunny.  All morning long the
crowds streamed into Corinth.  They came by train, wagons, buggies, and the family surrey, on horseback, and even on foot.  Some came from as far away as Nashville, Birmingham, and Jackson.  Everybody wanted to see that pacing mule do his stuff, but the odds were sky high on Dancing Wonder.  Old Salem didn't have a Chinaman's chance!

Dancing Wonder came onto the track doing a fancy cakewalk to please the
noisy crowd that lined the track twenty deep on each side.  Riding in the
saddle of the high-wheeled racing sulky used in those days was Dancing
Wonder's regular driver, Johnny Delbert.   One of Sycamorah's colored
grooms, Josh , was handling the ribbons on Old Salem.  Josh was fast
becoming an expert driver with nerves of steel and the fearless courage of
a lion.  (He was killed in a racing accident five years later at Louisville,
Kentucky, that took the lives of three men.)
The starter, riding a saddle horse, took the two racers up the track a ways
then brought them sweeping down the track for the start of the race.  
When they had settled well into their gaited speed, and were going steadily side by side, he fired the starting pistol on one of the most unique races ever run on a race track.  A contest of speed between a blooded trotting horse and pacing mule.

Dancing Wonder broke into the lead, but by the time they flew by the
quarter pole they were again head and head.  The lead switched back and
forth until they came into the head of the stretch nose to nose.  Then they
swept down the home stretch in a mad dash for the finish line.  Old Salem
was matching Dancing Wonder stride for stride in that furious drive for the finish.

  Fifty yard from the finish Old Salem began to slowly inch into the
lead, stride and stride in the furious line leading by a head.  The throng   
of spectators milled about buzzing with speculation.   They anxiously awaited the start  of the second heat.

It was the middle of the afternoon when the second heat of the race got
under way.  Immediately, Dancing Wonder took the lead, going at a furious
gait.   At the quarter pole he was ahead by a length and a half.  When he
turned the half-mile he was leading by five lengths, and going at a
terrific clip.  When Dancing Wonder made the turn at the head of the
stretch he was in front of the trailing mule by eight lengths.  But he was
leg-weary and tiring fast for he had set a blistering pace from the start
of the heat.  Then John Hinton tapped his mule with the whip, and Old
Salem throwed on the coal and opened up the throttle, heading for home
like a summer boarder rushing for the dinner table.

Well, Old Salem won the heat by a length and a half.  He had put on a
driving surge of blazing speed that had swept him down the stretch like a
sorrel streak of lightning.  Old Salem had accomplished the impossible, and
he did it with incredible ease and in a manner most noble .It was estimated
that twenty-five thousand dollars had changed hands that day, a fantastic
sum for a match race in those days. Old Salem was taken back to Sycamorah Plantation, and kept in race training.  No more did he pull the double-shovel in the cotton fields of Sycamorah.

In the next three years Old Salem was challenged by many famous trotters and pacers, but he never lost a single match race.  
It seemed every racing man in the three states of Mississippi, Alabama, and
Tennessee wanted to try out Tom Hinton's pacing mule. Then, after Old
Salem had beaten the great pacer, Proud Prince, in Birmingham on the Fourth of July in 1879, it was impossible to match him  again.  So Tom Hinton sold the mule that fall to his son, Calvin, who was
going to Texas to settle.   There he was to run the fabulous Andy Jackson
in one of the greatest match races, according to the old timers that saw
it, ever run on a harness track.

It all began  with a Halloween prank, then Tom Hinton's practical joke
started what was to grow into a folklore legend in the states of
Mississippi and Texas- the legend of Old Salem the pacing mule.