According to Ng Loy

According to Ng Loy by W. C. Tuttle is a frontier adventure short story written in the early 20th century. Set in a remote northern gold-mining camp, it explores luck, superstition, and the fragility and redemption of friendship amid harsh winter wilderness. The likely topic is how a simple talisman and a shared belief in fate test and ultimately renew the bond between partners.

Caught in a blizzard, Irishman Jimmy Mulcahy and Swede Lars Anderson stumble into the cabin of the aged Chinese prospector Ng Loy, who saves them and shares a carved white ivory elephant he calls a luck charm that, to its owner, brings happiness to others. After using his stake to buy grub, the men win big in town and credit the charm—until it vanishes. Each suspects the other, they brawl savagely, and their long partnership collapses as they work separate forks of Trinity Creek, still sending shares through Loy. When a traveler reports Loy missing, they find him dead under a fallen tree; bitterness flares again as they prepare his burial. Clearing the grave site, they uncover the lost elephant in a pack-rat’s nest, realize neither had stolen it, and wordlessly reconcile. They bury the charm with Loy and leave the hill as partners once more, the old man’s creed—friendship as a kind of heaven—proved in their renewed bond. (This is an automatically generated summary.)