mstevens
Toadfish. Splendid is implied but not guaranteed.
Referring back to El Guadaro's story he relates that there were innocents dead in their vehicles who had apparently continued driving forward and came upon the bad guys and/or to the murder scene. Each one of those dead innocents was dead because they were moving forward toward the bad guys based on his description of multiple bullet holes in the front windshield.
Ric clearly describes that he was driving north and that the other vehicles appear to have been driving south toward the original scene. Beyond that, we just don't know.
He doesn't provide any evidence that he didn't pass the original malefactors passing him heading south (how would he have known?), that they didn't precede him driving north, that they weren't watching him from the bushes, or that they didn't head off to the east or west somehow. There's simply no way for him to know any of that. All we know is that, in that particular situation, what he did ended up being safe.