Horse Trader

In the west you had horse traders that could sell anything with a lie. Then you had horse traders that really knew their business and were honest in their dealings. When I was growing up in Oklahoma I had the pleasure of knowing both kinds of horse traders. The horse traders that would lie to you about the health or what was not straightforward about an animal were the kind that did not have much of a repeat of customers. Word would get out on the trader and not many people would be trading or buying a horse from this type of trader. The horse traders that told the person the honest truth about the animal and still be able to satisfy the persons need in a horse had always repeated customers. These men would have people tell other people that he had never saw before and they would know that they would get an honest deal. These old time horse traders could take a horse that was in poor health or people thought the horse was ready for the glue factory, so to speak all most dead, and bring the poor creature back to health. My step-father, Frank Wesley Johnson, was such of a trader. The herbal mixtures wrote about in this book were some of many he used in getting horses healthy. He used such remedies on horse, cattle, and us kids from time to time. It the early 1900's he was know to trade horses several times near Cache Oklahoma with Frank James and J. Frank Dalton (who he said until the end that it was the Jessie James he met when he was a boy at his fathers (Green W. Johnson) home on Only Creek near Stigler Indian Territory.) Some of the horse traders were just local men that did not travel more than a hundred or so miles from home. While other horse traders might range from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border and from the Mississippi River to the Ari-zona territory. These traders usually had a covered wagon and might have ten or more horses strung out behind the wagon on a lead line. These men would have people hear of their trading skills and a person might travel fifty miles to the trader that was honest.