Ultimatum

The old man stood in the center of Winant's hotel room, the sheriff's ill-fitting denims hanging on his slight frame like the castoff clothing of a scare-crow. "The box," he said. His voice, after talking for so long, was a hoarse, rasping croak. "Give me the box." Winant sat in a decrepit wicker chair, holding the box in his lap, his eyes missing no detail of the old man's shrunken figure with its bald dome-like head and wrinkled parchment face.