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“Outside the Southern Border
Along a thoroughfare
Footprints by the highway
Vanished into air

“The man without a shadow
Slipped by in the night
Fate had turned the tables
Until the morning light”

It’s hard to find a starting point when it comes to John Murrell and how I tracked him down.  I’m talking about The Great Western Land Pirate.  John Andrews Murrell, the outlaw bandit who once led a Mystic Clan with designs to take over the Deep South.  That would have been around 1830 to 1844.

Of course, by the time we crossed paths in 1969, he had taken on a more ghostly form.  Me, I’m just a kid from West Texas chasing a Rock and Roll dream in Music City.  I had no idea he had his eye on me.  No idea at all that The Great Western Land Pirate and his Mystic Clan included wannabe songwriters in their design.

It’s a good thing I got out of there.  And a good thing I made a stopover on my way home.  I come from two worlds.  West Texas where I grew up, and Northwest Louisiana, where as a kid, I paid regular visit to my country kin.  I had gone astray in Music City, Nashville. Now, here in be backwoods of Kisatchie Forest they brought me back into the fold.

Turns out my kinfolk had their dealings with John Murrell, too.  For three generations they had been searching for Seven Treasureshe left buried under tall pines.  They told tales of stone carvings hidden under brush, treasure maps and waybills written in secret code, and of all things, ghostly figures that haunted the woods . . . Same ones that tailed me on Music Row.

The whole time I spent in Nashville I couldn’t write a thing.  I had natural ability to play guitar.  But had nothing to say, just too busy trying to be a Rock Star . . . until now.  Something clicked when I returned to my roots.  Something tried and true that comes from the heart.    

I found that treasure.  But not in gold coins.  The real treasure is the story itself.  A tale that brings redemption and strength to turn the tables on John A. Murrell.

Now, within these pages I have something to say.

Bayou Texan
A Memoir of Known Facts
Robert Alan aka Lanny Fiel