Shh … listen,” I whispered to Tyler, cutting off our lively debate about the state of the world and the existence of alien life. We peered into the darkness toward the purring engine sound that had just caught my ear. “Does that sound like a four-wheeler to you?”

Ambient ATV sounds in the west desert are commonplace — but not this far out. And not at 2 a.m.

A soft red light scattered on the junipers surrounding our makeshift camp as the sound crept steadily closer. Seconds later, a shaky spotlight illuminated the hillside below us. Was it a couple of kids out for a twilight ride who, from the immense web of trails that overlays the Deep Creek Mountains, just happened to pick the same path we did? Had we accidentally set up camp on somebody’s property? Or had we been followed by somebody with malicious intent?

Gut instinct told us to leave, but the overgrown road beyond where we had stopped would be a bit more than Tyler’s little Chevy Prism could handle. And heading back down the canyon would ensure a confrontation. The ATVs — it was now clear that there were two — rolled toward us and stopped just out of sight. All we could do was wait.

“There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life,” wrote Mark Twain, “when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.”

The words come from the famous frontier writer’s 1876 novel, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” He wrote the book a decade after setting out on a stagecoach journey through the Wild West. Twain’s travels took him across the country, yet several spots along the Utah leg of the Pony Express Route merited mentions in his book “Roughing It.”

Dugway Station was memorable to Twain only as a pit stop along a 60-mile stretch of “alkali desert,” which he described as “one of that species of deserts whose concentrated hideousness shames the diffused and diluted horrors of Sahara.”

His description of the still non-descript station site is as amusing as it is blunt: “There was a stage station there. It was 45 miles from the beginning of the desert, and 23 from the end of it.”

However cynical his description of our west desert may be, Twain had gone west in search of adventure. And adventure he found. Nearly 150 years later, Tyler and I had set off on the very same path to tap that adventurous spirit and to film material for a documentary on the legendary route.

We explored the trail from Faust to Dugway station before night fell, then continued in the darkness, drinking Dr. Pepper, snacking on green olives — our signature adventure snack — and stopping to film interesting bends in the road. We planned to camp that night somewhere near Gold Hill, then loop back to Tooele via Wendover and I-80 the next day.

Night time in the desert inspires all kinds of interesting thoughts and questions, which become even more interesting when you’re listening to the soundtrack for “The Matrix”: How close are those mountains? Is the Old River Bed really haunted by desert fairies like the journals say? How could a Pony Express rider not be scared to death out here?

With one’s surroundings shrouded in darkness, the mind’s attempts to fill the visual void can rely only upon imagination. Neither of us had driven this half of the route before. And just as Mark Twain’s recalled imagining grand and celebrated vistas during his night-time ride, Tyler and I reveled in thoughts of the great desert outside the scope of our headlights.

Then it had been time to call it a night. After quietly coasting through the sleeping “almost ghost town” of Gold Hill, we drove along several dirt roads and set up camp in a small canyon in the Clifton Flats area. We might have been asleep soon, were it not for the imposing ATV riders, who had now turned off their headlights and were idling somewhere close by.

We would just greet them, we thought. Play dumb, but be ready for a fight. Then, from the shadows, nothing. No audible turnabout, no retreat. Silence. We sat still and spoke softly for the next little while as we listened for something. Still, nothing. After some time, we continued our debate about the state of the world and the existence of alien life. At some point, the adrenaline wore off and we fell asleep.

When exactly the phantom ATVs turned around and left us, we’ll never know. We awoke with the sunrise, confused but relieved. It was morning now, and what had been an unnerving situation at night was now just a really cool story — an integral part of the adventure that we could relate to our no doubt extremely interested wives.

I scanned the surrounding terrain to reconcile daylight’s reality with my nighttime visions of the place. For some reason they’re always wildly different. I thought of Mark Twain’s account of reaching Dugway Station at dawn, after a night ride full of wide-eyed imagining. He was famously disappointed: “The poetry was all in the anticipation — there is none in the reality.”

It would be easy, as a desert rat, to mock Twain for this statement. But Tyler and I weren’t in a stagecoach a thousand miles from home along an ambush-prone trail. We had a car, plenty of Dr. Pepper, and decent cell phone service. Appreciation of the desert’s beauty perhaps comes easier when survival is less of a factor.

While the old trail still has present-day dangers — its remote locale, lack of services, occasional rough grade, and the near certainty of at least one flat tire per trip come to mind — a responsibly planned trip can always bring out the “rightly constructed” boy or girl in all of us.

Clint Thomsen is a Stansbury Park resident who grew up climbing mountains, wandering desert paths and exploring Utah’s wilds. He may be contacted via his Web site at www.bonnevillemariner.com.