Alright this is pretty silly, I got 6k gold from leaving the caravan alone for months, eventually stumbling over them and escorting them to two towns. There is nothing stoping the player from just accepting every caravan escort quest, leaving them alone for a long time and just getting unproportionally high paychecks everytime you find them again. I have yet to see bandit groups large enough to take on traders anyway so its not like there is a serious risk of losing them in the early game.
If you move too far away for too long the Quest should just fail
