John Basket
Text:
Character Key:
Display Name:
John Basket
Sort Name:
Basket, John
Race:
Indian
Gender:
Male
Class:
Indian Tribal Leader
Rank:
Minor
Vitality:
Alive
Occupation:
Criminal
Specific Job:
Bootlegger
First Mentioned:
Biography:
John Basket is a Chickasaw who lives in the settlement near the Indian mound, and well-known as moonshiner who makes what Major de Spain describes as "bust-skull whiskey" (75). Basket unwittingly becomes an accomplice in Ash's practical joke against Luke Provine when Ratliff offhandedly suggests Luke visit him to get a cure for his hiccups.
Note:
CUT: that is, according to the unnamed narrator, “under Government protection” (65);
“I just told [Luke] about how old Basket was a kind of doctor,” Ratliff tells the other men. “I never expected him to take hit serious” (73). When Old Man Ash learns that Luke had gone to Basket for help, Ash goes to Basket first to tell him that a “new revenue agent” was coming to arrest him for bootlegging, but Ash told Basket that the new agent “warn’t much” and that a “good skeer” would likely make him go away. As Ash tells Ratliff at the end of the story, the Indians caught Luke and threatened to burn him, tying him loosely to a pile of wood “so he could git loose in a minute” (78).
Individual or Group:
Individual
Character changes class in this text:
digyok:node/character/14227