"Glad of it," muttered Steve. "There must be mighty little sport fishing through the ice when it's bitter cold; and I reckon all they do it for is the market."
"You're wrong there," Max advised him, promptly; "for while some men fish on the ice as a business, and make fair wages, many others do the same because they like it. They even keep a little stove or a fire of some sort going in those cabins and tents; and let me tell you it's some exciting watching the tip-ups signal here and there, when the fish are hungry, and biting fast and furious."
"Tip-ups, you call them; that has to do with the lines, don't it?" Steve asked.
"Yes, every line is rigged so that when a fish is caught the fisherman is notified in some way or other," Max went on to explain. "Some use little bells that tinkle with a bite; others have red strips of cloth that are pulled up to the top of a short stick; but the common way is to make a crotch cut from a branch of a tree answer. It tilts up when the line is tugged, and so you know that you ought to hurry there and get your prize. That's how they came to be called tip-ups."
"Well, as the ice has long ago gone out of the ponds around Carson I reckon we won't get any chance to try that queer sort of pickerel fishing," Steve observed; "but I brought my minnow seine along, so we ought to scoop up plenty of live bait, and they take with pickerel every time. You can trust Uncle Steve for bringing in an occasional mess of fresh fish."
"H-h-how about h-h-hunting!"
"Is the law on everything, Max?" questioned Bandy-legs.
"Pretty near everything," came the reply; "we'll look up the game laws in the morning, and see how we stand. I like to hunt as well as the next one, but all the same I don't believe in shooting game out of season, and I'd only do it if I was starving, and had to save my life that way."
"But whether we go hunting or not," ventured Steve, "we're all glad we thought to fetch our guns along."
They exchanged quick glances at that.