There's this sense that the American West is wide open country.

Nothing to hear but the wind and the sagebrush.

But recently started to sound more like this.

In 2014, Bunkerville, Nevada, Cliven Bundy and his family had their cattle rounded up

by the federal government over a matter of unpaid grazing fees.

To hear them tell it, what they did next was gather a posse and take those cows back.

At gunpoint.

Heavily armed, they forced dozens of federal agents to stand down.

They'd really like to be seen as cowboys.

The West was down the line.

I'm Liusa Tilly and for the last two years I've been reporting on the Bundy family, trying

to figure out what they're doing to the American West.

If this is about cows, why did they turn around and take over a national wildlife refuge

in Oregon?

I am 100% willing to lay my life down to fight against tyranny.

They called themselves patriots, so they were fighting a tyrannical government.

This is not the kind of story where the good guys were white hats and the bad guys were

black.

It's time to do something in offense rather than just defense.

This is a story about power and privilege and truth versus belief.

Along the way there are nuclear weapons and religious prophecies, and two sides both

see themselves as heroes, but they're not.

...