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Yes, it seems reasonable that the empire would send someone to deal with the problem. However, a pack of soldiers might not be a match for such a creature, depending on who they send. For impact, I'd probably have the PCs meet said soldiers and find their remains later. :P
By the rules, I think the dragon flies at full speed unless impacted by a condition that says otherwise. No, it wouldn't seem reasonable for them to track her after she's out of line of site. Maybe, MAYBE by a blood trail or something, assuming the party can sense that, e.g. smell. She's almost certain to outrun them, at least to a point where she could hide.
Civilization every ten miles implies a pretty dense population. Remember that in pre-industrial societies access to water/resources and gainful employment determines where people live. It might be reasonable to find settlements frequently along a river, as the crow files, but even still I'd say one major settlement every fifty miles is probably plenty.
Of course, I'm an American, so I'm basing that assumption on our expansionist period and the resulting density. I think that European towns are more tightly-packed. That would probably make for something to research.
NOW, all that said, the 'correct' answer for 'is there an inn' would be - do you WANT there to be an inn? Because on the one hand a generous farmer's house works just as well, and on the other, yes there is an inn but there's no rooms available, they don't serve your kind, etc, etc, etc.
When I'm designing adventures, I find it particularly helpful to flesh out the circumstances and motivations that led to particular situations. In your example, I would consider the exact reason why the green dragon is plaguing the trade routes north of Westcrown in analyzing the reasonableness of its existence there. Depending on how much of the Pathfinder campaign setting you're using for your adventure, there are any number of ways to go with this. I might read up on green dragons in either Dragons Revisited or the Dragons of Golarion article in Pathfinder #4. These can provide much inspiration for fleshing out the dragon and its motivations.
The reason I place this much emphasis on NPC motivation is two-fold: in regards to this particular example, I place dragons sparingly throughout my adventures, because this sparseness makes them that much more exciting and interesting to battle, and as incredible creatures of legend, they should not be too commonplace. Thus, if a dragon is on the loose, there should be a pretty good reason for it being there.
Second, creating interesting NPC motivations not only enhances the world your characters are playing in, but it helps compel the campaign and provides you with possible hooks for future adventures. Remember that angry pirate who went on a killing spree looking for his first wife's new lover, not because he still loved her but because he was afraid she had given away the secret to his treasure? Well, with just that, you've got a catch-the-killer adventure and a find-the-treasure adventure, as well as any number of other hooks that could result from such a convoluted situation. In your case, the dragon might have learned that a particularly noteworthy wizard has been in Westcrown lately, and it hopes to intercept this scholar in pursuit of his knowledge of a particularly noteworthy relic of extreme power. Boom: dragon, wizard, relic; three interesting elements that you could feasibly build an entire campaign off of. The more elements you add to a character's back story, the more possibilities you grant yourself down the road, making your job as a GM far easier.
Using these principles, you can easily come up with a compelling and rich reason that the locals haven't been able to take care of their dragon problem. The easiest explanation is, of course: it's a dragon; it has plenty of magic and brawn to take on a few puny soldiers every now and then, or avoid them entirely if it so wishes. But this isn't incredibly interesting—wouldn't it be cooler if a nearby settlement that's been particularly affected has asked the Chelaxian government for aid, but the messengers the settlement keeps sending are being intercepted by roving bandits (or perhaps the dragon itself, thinking each one the wizard it's searching for in disguise), or the government can't spare troops because they're too busy quelling rebellion in Westcrown?
Now that I've sufficiently distracted us all from the point of your post and probably failed to answer your question succinctly, I'll address your other queries.
A chase is always fun, and the GameMastery Guide has an excellent section on chase encounters and making them interesting on page 232.
I agree with mcbobbo in that 10 miles every small town is pretty dense, but that you should place such settlements wherever you deem appropriate for your needs.
While I was planning this, I came up with a question... in an empire as powerful as Cheliax, would a scenario like this even make sense? Wouldn't the Empire just send a company of soldiers to patrol the road and kill the dragon?
This thought experiment will require
1 white cat
1 chair that can spin in place.
Yes, the situation makes sense. From the dragon's point of view every gold coin that's not in his lair is a searing indictment about the unfairness of the universe.
From the empires point of view its a cost benefit analysis. How much is the dragon taking? How much of that is taxable? How much firepower would we have to devote to taking him down? What would be the cost of replacing those elite troops that would inevitably fall in battle? Opportunity cost: Could we be making more money having those same troops raid and pillage elsewhere instead? Should we shoot the dragon.. or recruit it?
Perhaps the "innocent traveler" on the road who tells them about the dragon is a government functionary, who has been given a certain amount of gold in order to assess the dragons strength and character so his hire ups can decide how to proceed. If he can talk the party into doing the test.. erm.. elimination mission for free good. And if a bunch of do gooders off the scaley menace for free so much the better.
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Do what feels best as a DM. Seriously. I cannot emphasize this enough. You don't need to crunch numbers or go all bizarro in estimating flight speed and all that. Just do what feels best as a DM.
Edit: I mean come on this sounds like a math problem. That ain't neccisary.
Edit 2: Also why would the dragon care about soldiers marching around, it's a damn dragon, what can those soldiers do.
"My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail is a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!"
Also, remember a young dragon might be a nuisance, but probably not a major threat unless it's trying to attack everyone that travels in that particular area. Like any other bandit of that scale, it might be enough of a problem that soldiers and patrols will chase it off the road if seen, but probably not all the way back to its lair to be finished off.
A young green dragon is only CR8, so no huge threat to civilization as noted above, and certainly not able to completely ignore those pesky humans. It's a dangerous woodland predator though.
Normally a young dragon is bound to be living with one or more of it's parents still, according to the 2E ecology of Dragons, only striking out for himself at young adult or later. This site also notes that "The wyrmlings typically stay with both parents until they reach adulthood (approximately 100 years). So it probably has not even got a lair of it's own.
Also note that Green Dragons love intrigue and seek to enslave other woodland creatures, killing those who cannot be controlled or intimidated. Though a young dragon doesn't even have charm person yet or the ability to cast spells. And it certainly doesn't have the power to change shape (and most greens never get this unless they learn it as a spell).
So why is this young one on it's own and fleeing?
Maybe someone did just to raid the lair of it's parent, and it is the sole survivor? But what about the charmed/enslaved woodland creatures servitors of the parent? Or maybe Hill Giants are those who hunted and raided the lair in the first place. Maybe they rebelled or wanted to free their brothers?
Check out the adventure VESICANT in Dungeon #16, which features a green dragon's lair. It was very well received.:
[...]
The interest of the Vesicant's adventure was that it showed a DM how a physically-weak dragon could achieve great results by using its brain.
For another green dragon check out Dungeon #35's GREEN LADY'S SORROW
Maybe you can adapt one of the adventures above or at least glean a trick or two...
BTW there are complete statblocks for each age category of each dragon at d20pfsrd.com.
Others have given good advice about your dragon. as far as hamlets/inns, they should be about as evenly spaced as to allow a place to stay for the average overland caravan. So depending on your culture, take the average days' travel time and put an inn that far apart from the last UNLESS there is a natural land break such as a crevasse/river/pass where in most cases, some enterprising govt or individual will have created a toll booth of some sort. a few copper per "leg" is standard (that means per leg of each animal and creature traveling over the toll. Many times these toll gates will have another entrepreneur (or possibly the same one) who will have opened an inn nearby to hold any people who need to rearrange packs and gear or hold any people that have to wait on a particularly large group ahead of them. Imagine how long it would take to get a 20 wagon caravan across a particularly wide river with only one ferry.
Each of these types of business will require a certain number of people to staff them so over time, a hamlet could spring up around them.