“Hey, man, I like those boots.” I looked up and saw Ammon Bundy’s bodyguard wearing truck-stop sunglasses, a camo ball cap, a camo jacket, and a little .38 revolver on his hip—the same getup he’d be seen wearing later that night in a clip on The Late Show. This sentence made up the first words spoken in what was to become maybe the oddest friendship of either of our lives. It was just after the morning press conference, four days into the standoff, and we were talking on the snowy access road that led from the gate of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge down to the cluster of buildings that had been taken over. The morning was gray, but the cloud roof was so high that it was hard to call the weather anything but clear, and you could still see all the way across the Harney Basin. My boots were a cross between western riding boots and traditional work boots, made by Red Wing and slightly too big for me, and I’ve never been able to find a pair to replace them.
“Thanks, man,” I said. I was heading up toward the parking lot to meet a photographer who had just driven in from Portland, Oregon.
