Folks always said ol’ come-back Jack was gonna drink himself into a casket. What they never expected was for him to drink himself out of one. But that piece of the story comes later, and requires a bit of preamble. You see, in order to know the story of come-back Jack, you also need to know about his brother, doesn’t-die Jules. The two men were tangled together as much in life as in their strange, questionable deaths, and it all began in the womb of a young prostitute by the name of Katarina Darke. 

Miss Darke, as her name implies, was a woman of dark beauty. Her olive skin and ebony hair caught the eyes of many a man, including a dangerous outlaw known as Charles Slade. Slade frequented an establishment called Madam Belle’s — a brothel in the red light district of Carlyle, Illinois. It was there that he met Katarina, whose strong will, fiery pride, and brooding disposition ensnared his heart as much as her form bewitched his senses. Slade favored the girl above all others, and when it was discovered that she was with child, he declared the offspring to be his and demanded the baby and its mother be turned over to him as soon as it was born. Katarina, who had no intention of going with Charles Slade, refused. The outlaw became angry, violent. He harassed the poor girl to the point that Madam Belle banned him from her establishment, which only provoked Slade even more.

When the time came for the child to be born, Slade and a group of his men ambushed Madam Belle’s, leaving naught but bullets and bloodshed in their wake. Charles found the girl in a hidden back room only to discover she had perished in the throes of childbirth. Her children, though — twin boys — had survived. Slade would’ve taken the infants that very night if not for the bravery of Katarina’s midwife. Slade had paid the young woman no mind, and when his back was turned, she buried a dagger between his shoulders and stole the children away to raise as her own. And so the Slade twins came into the world baptized in violence and blood. This ill omen would not, however, come to fruition for many years, long after the boys had grown into men and ventured out into the world on their own.

The Slade twins started out well enough. Jack, the younger of the two by thirteen minutes, was a businessman. Though twins, the brothers were not identical; Jack had inherited his mother’s swarthy appearance and bewitching charm, which only served to aid his reputation and advance his endeavors. He started his own stage line out of Virginia City, Montana with Jules, the elder. For a few years, the brothers scratched out their living on the dusty, packed dirt roads between towns, forts, and outposts, transporting passengers, goods, mail, money, and anything that needed moving for a modest fee. It was dangerous work, as robbers were apt to fall upon stagecoaches and their drivers unawares. The Slade brothers, however, protected their cargo with a strict “shoot first, ask questions later” policy. As time went on, Jack and Jules joined their route and coaches with the Overland Stage Line, securing their livelihood and their reputations as terrors to thieves and outlaws. Jack, who quickly rose to the position of station master, was known to shoot and hang bandits on sight, and his brother, a grizzled, bearlike man of a particularly nasty temper who had taken after their father in more ways than just his appearance, was rumored to do worse.

As the years progressed, it appeared that Jack and Jules were on their way to becoming the most well-known (and the most feared) whips in the West. The Slade brothers might even have acquired management of Overland Stage Line for themselves if not for Marie Dale. 

Marie, a quiet, gentle spirit of considerable beauty, stole Jack’s heart with her fair hair, milky skin, and jade-colored eyes. The two fell hopelessly in love and were married within a fortnight of meeting one another. They settled in a lone cabin in the nearby mountains, and although Jack was passionately fond of his wife, even she could not keep him from the open road. The rugged, untamed country of the American West called to Jack’s wild, untethered heart, and he could not help but heed it. Over time, separation starved their passion, and Marie, heartbroken and forlorn, sought comfort in the arms of the only other man in her life: her husband’s brother. 

One night, after an especially tempestuous storm buried Jack’s route beneath snow and mud and loose rocks, he returned home to find Jules and Marie in bed together. Enraged, Jack drew down on his brother but only managed to take off one of his ears. Jules escaped out the window, and Jack vowed revenge if he ever laid eyes on him again. As for Marie, her sorrows would only increase. Jack almost never returned home after that, choosing instead to camp along his routes and avoid his desperate, miserable wife. The opportunity for revenge would come, and with it the consummation of that bloody portent — one might even call it a curse — that had hung over the brothers like a pall since the day of their birth…