Duncan Harley

Not may folk know it, but there is a cowboy-town just outside Huntly. Not that you would likely stumble across it by accident of course. Hidden in full view alongside some minor road linking Tranquillity with Huntly, the wild-western village hosts a graveyard appropriately named Boot Hill. There are no genuine graves here, only empty headstones made of wood, but visitors to Tranquillity kind-of-generally get the drift. Boot Hill is of course full of those folks ‘hung by mistake’ and ‘shot at noon cause he stole a horse’. The carved markers speak of bank-robbers and cattle rustlers who, in some far dreamland took that step too far and suffered the indignity of a good bit of neck-stretching after shooting the Sherriff. Not that Huntly is a stranger to the wild west. In far off days The Bruce ravished the land in what became known as The Hership Of Buchan. Burning and slaying as he went the somewhat nasty man ensured loyalty via the sword. The early American settlers must ...