Perhaps intentional, but there is no gold reward for this quest, neither from the NPC nor "small sacks of coins" or coin piles.
NPC isn't going to reward you, he just points you where trouble might be. Coin piles sounds odd, but also sounds like maybe your party had someone with sticky fingers.
Small sacks of coin would likely indicate they don't have unique variables and therefore could share them with another quest, meaning you'd get nothing if you did the other quest beforehand. I can probably fix that one.
This quest has never rewarded gold in EFU:COR. The Deer people didn't give out gold either.