Oregon - On a rainless Saturday in February, hundreds of outlaw bikers and their associates roared into the west end of Eugene, bottlenecking on a back street between warehouses and train tracks. The brothers killed their engines and poured into the clubhouse of the Free Souls Motorcycle Club.

They came to celebrate the club's 1968 founding, an annual rite of biker bacchanalia called the Birthday Party. And waiting for them, as they do every year, were the cops.

The uniforms took positions on nearby streets, writing tickets, taking snapshots of biker insignia and standing ready in case of trouble. But the stakes for this year's party were higher than ever, Eugene police Capt. Chuck Tilby said, because the Mongols were in town.

The Mongols Motorcycle Club, considered one of the nation's most violent biker gangs, astonished authorities last fall when it quietly chartered the first of what it now claims are four chapters in Oregon.

Flying its colors in Portland, Eugene, Medford and Bend without permission of the state's other outlaw motorcycle clubs defies a long-held code of biker conduct, an insult that police worry will provoke a turf war.

Oregon's five other outlaw motorcycle clubs, classified as gangs by the state's attorney general, have enjoyed a recent lull in their long conflict with police. Some of those bikers have spent the past few years on the offensive, suing police when they feel their civil rights have been trampled.

The Mongols' reputation preceded them. For 30 years, the California-based club has fought a bloody war with the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. The public got a glimpse in 2002, when surveillance cameras caught bikers clashing with knives, guns and hand tools at Harrah's Casino in Laughlin, Nev., leaving two Angels and a Mongol dead.

Retired federal agent Billy Queen, who rode undercover with the Mongols for two years leading up to the Laughlin riot, said the club's sudden appearance in Oregon means trouble.

"The Mongols want to be No. 1; they want to be known as the baddest biker club rollin' out there," said Queen, whose work helped convict 53 Mongols of crimes ranging from motorcycle theft to murder. The club's leadership has combed the barrios of East L.A., Queen said, recruiting members of street gangs -- even those without motorcycles -- "to beef the numbers up and take on the Hells Angels."

Although Oregon's Mongols claim more than two dozen members, criminal intelligence experts have counted fewer than 20 -- and that number includes associates. The club's North American membership has swelled from about 350 to 750 in the past six years, according to Queen. By comparison, police say the Hells Angels number about 3,600 worldwide.

Oregon's gang experts say their immediate concern is that members of the state's established outlaw clubs will attack the Mongols for treading on their turf, catching innocent people in the middle.

Eugene police Detective Dave Burroughs said he's worried that a Mongol will get hurt and that the club's national leadership will flood Oregon with brothers from California and Nevada.

Should that happen, Burroughs said, "A war is going to erupt."

Flying their colors

So far, it's been a cold war.

At 5:33 on the night of the Free Souls party, Eugene police canine unit officer Robert A. Rosales stopped a black Ford Escort not far from the clubhouse. Rosales identified the 38-year-old driver, Paul Askew, as a member of the Outsiders Motorcycle Club and his two passengers as members of the Gypsy Joker and Brother Speed clubs.

Rosales cited Askew for driving with an expired license and patted down the bikers. He searched the Escort's trunk and found boxes of ammo, an unloaded .380-caliber handgun and an Outsiders motorcycle vest with a loaded .22-caliber derringer in the pocket.

A few moments later, Special Agent Jimmy Packard, a veteran of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, pulled his SUV up to a pack of Mongols gathered in the parking lot of the Super 8 Motel in nearby Springfield. The Mongols listened as Packard, with a strong North Carolina twang and vocabulary as salty as any biker, told them police had just stopped rival club members out "Mongol huntin'."

The Mongols weren't invited to the Free Souls bash. But 14 had taken rooms at the Super 8 and ridden that afternoon to a strip club a few hundred yards from the clubhouse. This was akin to thumbing their noses at the clubs, which require outsiders to check in before carrying their colors into the state.

Gypsy Jokers wear a diamond shaped "1%er" patch, a reference to the fraction of American bikers who live as outlaws, defying anyone who attempts to thwart their freedom.

The Jokers' bylaws spell out their position on clubs like the Mongols, who wear the same colors: "No patches with black and white or white and black . . . allowed in the area, period." Violators, according to police, have been treated to bare-knuckle beatings.

The specter of grown men brawling over patches might seem preposterous. But patches remain powerful emblems of brotherhood in the biker subculture.

"It may seem like an insignificant or minor issue to people who haven't been around bikers much," said Sam Hochberg, a biker-rights lawyer. "But it sure isn't to the people who live the life."

The Mongols sought no permission from the Jokers when they planted their colors in Oregon last October, saying they don't answer to any other club. A Mongols representative, speaking under a club edict requiring anonymity, said it wasn't personal: "We're not trying to antagonize anybody."

On the night of the Free Souls party, Packard warned the Mongols they ought to stay put. But they soon fired up their bikes and rode off to party at two Springfield nightspots that were known Free Souls hangouts.

War and peace

Gang experts say they're waiting to see whether the Gypsy Jokers let the Mongols wear black and white on their turf -- or do something about it. The Jokers have held the answer close.

"They can do whatever they want to do," a veteran Joker told The Oregonian, "and we'll do whatever we're gonna do." He also declined to be identified, saying it's not the club's practice to grant interviews.

The Jokers fought their own bloody turf war with the Hells Angels 40 years ago in San Francisco. The clubs reportedly reached an accord in 1967: The Jokers left California; the Angels agreed to stay out of Oregon.

Now, police identify about 80 Jokers in the region, half of them felons. They have been sent to prison for their roles in drug dealing, robbery, kidnapping, rape, murder and other crimes -- most of them years ago.

The Jokers' bylaws strictly forbid criminal conduct, known as "prostituting the patch." But some members have brutalized people who failed to pay them respect.

In 1983, two Jokers were sentenced to prison for killing a man who'd made the mistake of fighting them at a Vancouver tavern. After the fight, the Jokers hunted the man down and beat him, stabbed him, shot him three times and left his corpse in a ditch near Camas, Wash.

The Jokers say they're not the miscreants police make them out to be. Two met with a reporter recently in a smoky Salem bar, portraying their brothers as conservatives who love their country. Most served in the military, they said, and a few watched their boys go off to war.

Members must be male, 21, and own an American-made bike -- cops, gays, needle users and African Americans need not apply.

Though the Jokers have earned a reputation as a hard-partying bunch, some forgo booze and drugs in favor of substantial amounts of coffee, which less-than-temperate members call "Christian crank."

The Jokers call one another brothers, and they say the bond is lifelong.

"Once a Joker, always a Joker," one said, "till the day you die."

Oregon's Mongols aren't too different. They acknowledge their club's fierce reputation: "I'm not saying we're saints," one said in an interview last month at a Milwaukie bar. They, too, claim the cops have them wrong.

Most are homegrown Oregonians who "patched over" from other outlaw clubs and are in their 20s and 30s. Some have served time, and a few are ex-skinheads. In the club, they've found a new family of brothers.

Queen, the former undercover agent, said the bond is genuine. He recalled returning from his mother's funeral and getting virtual silence from his ATF colleagues; Mongols met him with bone-crushing hugs and tears.

"The love and loyalty that they have for each other is as strong as that of the Thin Blue Line," he said.

They can also be intimidating. Late last month, at least 10 Mongols got into a brawl at a downtown Eugene music club. Employees wouldn't cooperate, a police report said, "because they were afraid of retaliation from the Mongols."

Rights violations alleged

Police have played cat-and-mouse with outlaw bikers since they started sewing patches on their backs after World War II. The game, full of swagger on both sides, didn't change much for a half-century.

But in the past few years, bikers have fought back in court -- and occasionally won cash settlements.

Last summer, the city of Portland paid $50,000 to settle a federal lawsuit against police for a raid on the Gypsy Joker clubhouse. Shortly before dawn on July 28, 2004, police used armored personnel carriers, military weapons and tear gas to storm the compound on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, crashing through walls.

They were after two Jokers accused of stealing motorcycles but found neither. Instead, they handcuffed and detained another Joker for so long -- five hours -- that he soiled himself, the lawsuit alleged.

The Jokers' biggest win came in 2005, when Gresham paid $300,000 in an out-of-court settlement to 23 bikers held at gunpoint for more than an hour during a club event. The Jokers had accused the city and two gang enforcement officers of civil rights violations, including unreasonable search and seizure.

Nine days after Eugene police seized guns from Outsiders member Askew near the Free Souls Birthday Party, lawyer Christian Bottoms filed notice that his client intends to sue the city.

In an interview, Bottoms said police stopped Askew solely because he's a biker. And he complained that the law entitles citizens to equal treatment whether they are "with a chess club or a motorcycle club."

Tilby, the Eugene police captain, said his officers don't stop people without probable cause -- and they won't ease up on bikers just because they've proved litigious.

"When they break the law," he said, "we'll be there to enforce it."