I've seen at least three articles in old newspapers, different names, different places, describing a street fight between two old plainsmen who advance toward each other until one runs out of ammo and then attacks the other with a bowie knife. Both men die. Is this a real event(s) or a "stock story" used to attract reader's interest?

I would have to look it up to get the details exactly but it sounds like the time Mike McCluskie's (whom Hugh Anderson had shot in Newton, Kansas, in 1871) brother caught Anderson in Medicine Lodge in about June 1873. The two men fought a duel with pistols, each being wounded by the shots, each finishing the other off with knives. Roger Myers