"Now, whatcher going to do?" demanded the guide, nervously.
"If I can't get young Gaston to walking on his own feet, then I'm going to pick him up in my arms and carry him out to the carriage," answered Tom Halstead, firmly.
"Smoking joss-house!" gasped the guide. "D'ye know what'll happen? There'll be a house-full of them chinks down on us! Hatchet men—gun men—say, young feller, dontcher know that these here hop-joints are protected by the highbinders?"
Tom Halstead had heard of the Chinese highbinders in New York. He knew of them as a desperate crowd of yellow-skinned thugs. The guide's own terror was too real to be feigned.
"If you're afraid of this kind of a job, what did you come here for?" asked the young skipper, quickly, gruffly.
"Why, I thought ye was goin' to try to coax the young Doc out. But, say—taking him out by force—lemme get outer this on the jump!"
"No, you don't," roared Tom Halstead, with swift and quite unlooked-for energy. "Stand by, now!"
He gripped the guide by the arm, fairly forcing him over to the bunk in which the young opium smoker lay. Giddings, if it was really he, lay open-eyed, yet unheeding.
"Come, get up!" ordered the boy, reaching with both hands under the opium smoker's shoulders and raising him. "Out on your feet!"
A drowsy, unintelligible protest came from the stranger. But Tom fairly lifted him out onto his feet, then threw a strong, supporting arm about him.