The character himself does not appear in the story, but the place where Pat Stamper sets up his camp is called "Hoke's pasture" (123), from which it seems safe to infer that Hoke is a farmer who rents the patch to the horse-trader.
Doc Peabody appears frequently in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fictions, though not usually as "Doc." As a physician, he can legally keep alcohol on hand for medicinal purposes in the otherwise dry county. He does not appear in this story, but provides the pint of whiskey that Pap drinks.
"Uncle Ike McCaslin," as he is called in this story (121, 129, 134), appears in many Yoknapatawpha texts. Most readers of Faulkner think of Ike in the woods with Sam Fathers and the bear, where he also struggles with the moral legacy of the McCaslin fortune. In this story, however, as in Faulkner's last three novels - The Town (1957), The Mansion (1960) and The Reivers (1962) - he is the owner of the hardware store in Jefferson. He sells the cream separator to Pap for $27.65 and, later, the same separator to Mammy for the same price.
Herman Short is another farmer in the Frenchman's Bend area who also trades horses. In a trade with Pat Stamper he acquired the horse that he later sold to Beasley Kemp for eight dollars. His frugality is indicated by the narrator's assumption that he still has the eight dollars.
Jody Varner, the storekeeper on the road to Jefferson, keeps abreast of the local news. He recites to Pap and the boy, and the loafers at his store the history of the horse that is half of the mismatched team taking them to Jefferson. He is contemptuous of Pap's assertion that the horse had its origins in Kentucky.
"Old Man" Anse Holland owns the farm on which Pap, Mammy, and the boy live and work. He seems not to notice Pap's pilfering of old broken tools and materials. At the end of the story, he declines to lend Pap "a mule to finish the lower piece with" (134).
Beasley Kemp is a neighboring farmer whose horse Pap acquires in a swap; he himself does not appear in the story, but in some respects the eight dollars in "actual cash money" he originally paid for the horse precipitate its events (123).
