One of my players just brought up an interesting point.
A caravan's base speed is 32 miles per day, they can get a lot faster though (3 horse trains + enhanced undercarriage make it 52 miles)
At a normal 30 ft base speed someone can do 24 miles per day. I guess if they spend one hour hustling (which they can do without taking damage or becoming fatigued) they can make 27 miles.
So how can the scouts who are supposedly scouting ahead of the caravan for danger, or behind them for people following, or hunt etc. keep up with it?
Logically they would move back and forth sometimes actually traveling more miles than they actually make progress, but lets just handwave that part.
So is it assumed scouts have a horse? If so, as thats not mentioned anywhere, would it be a horse that's present in the caravan anyway, or would they need to specifically buy one (which increases consumption again)
Well, first off one should probably put a limit on the caravans speed which doesn't exceed normal horse speed. Which is 50 feet/round, which does translate pretty closely to 52 miles per hour. No amount of horse trains and enhanced undercarriages should make the caravan faster than that.
But, yes, in the case you are citing, scouts should have horses, IMO. Common logic should apply here.