Looking at some old westerns where cowboys travel around or herd cattle for long distances, what did they do for money? Did someone carry a huge bag of cash/gold to pay for supplies, lodging when required etc?
Going back further to the like of Marco Polo and others in those times, did they carry around gold or just rely on the generosity of strangers? Hunt for their food?
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People did indeed carry around gold and silver in purses whenever they were traveling. Gold is very valuable so you can get quite far with little weight in gold. But most of the time people traveled short distances where they could carry their own supplies for the journey or slow enough that they could forage off the wilderness or work for food along the way.
Cowboys is actually a good example as they would typically work short contracts at ranches. They would travel to the closest ranch with need of work, then get fed by the ranch while they worked the pastures and get paid in food and silver once their contract was over. Quite often they would be required to drive the cows to market, which was often not in the closest city, and then the rancher would pay them from the money they got for the meat as they were dismissed.
Marco Polo did indeed travel much further then what you would expect gold and silver could get you. He followed trade routes where each merchant would only carry the goods to the next city on the route before selling their wares to the next merchant and then buy supplies and wares for the return journey. Even on the first leg of Marco Polo’s journey, from western Europe to Constantinopel, was stretching the distance one could travel with your own supplies or with gold that did not get you robbed. But Marco Polo was a very influential diplomat with the support of all the emperors of the lands he traveled through. So his seal alone was worth more then money could buy. He could enter the home of any lord along the way and expect to get treated as an honored guest. He would then write a letter to the emperor complementing the hospitality and this letter would be considered a recept for paying taxes. Even criminals would let him go once they noticed his seal because they knew that if he went missing the emperors army would descend on them and their family. But regular people could not travel like Marco Polo.
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