Although Leroy had carried Nick the entire way out to the main entrance, he had the decency to set the fox and his carpet bag gently down outside the door rather than throwing them bodily. "Quill says you can't ever come back," Leroy said, and remarkably he actually sounded somewhat sad.
Nick shrugged and tipped his hat at the bear before putting it back on his head. "Nothing personal, Leroy," he said.
Leroy nodded slowly. "Nothing personal, Wilde."
The door closed and there was the sound of locks being engaged, and then Judy found herself alone with the fox. "What were you thinking, waving your badge around like that?" he demanded, his ears flat back against his head.
"I had to question them," she protested as they started to walk away from the restaurant.
"Question them?" he asked incredulously, "What did you think would happen?"
He deepened his voice into a poor imitation of Lionheart and said, rather mockingly, "Why yes, Agent Hopps, I did order the hit on Carajou. Please, arrest me."
He laced his fingers together and brought them underneath his muzzle as he rolled his head to the side and raised the pitch of his voice into what was presumably supposed to be an imitation of her. "Gee, thanks Mr. Lionheart!"
She chose to ignore the sarcasm and focused on the implied point of his crude bit of theater. "So you think Lionheart did it?"
Nick scowled down at her. "It's been two years since I set foot in the city. How would I know?"
She was undeterred. "Then what was Quill hiding? What was that about gangs making deals in his clubs?"
The hedgehog had almost completely lost his composure when Nick had made his comment, and Judy was sure that there was something to it. Nick sighed, and then said, as though he were speaking to a particularly stupid kit, "It means that you, fearless agent that you are, aren't asking the right questions."
"So what's the right question?" she pressed.
"One that doesn't involve parading me around a bunch of gangsters," he replied shortly, not even bothering to look down at her, "You want to get yourself killed, that's your business, but these aren't nice mammals you're dealing with. You really think Lionheart is going to let me be?"
"I'm not going to let anyone kill you," Judy said, drawing herself up.
She found his complete lack of confidence in her abilities incredibly insulting, and while she supposed that he might have a point in terms of how she was conducting her investigation he wasn't making matters any easier for her. His continued refusal to answer even the simplest of questions made her wonder if he actually really did know more than he was telling her, or if he was simply acting as though he did to annoy her. "Mm-hmm," Nick said, looking down at her skeptically, before looking at his watch and then clapping his paws together.
"Well, it's been a gas, but it's getting awful late," he said, "Why don't I head back to my place?"
Judy quickly positioned herself in front of him. "Not a—" she began, but then was cut off by the buzzing klaxon of a car horn.
"Stay outta the lane, lady!" a shrill voice cried from somewhere near Judy's ankle.
She looked down to see a little Barker electric car that had dodged around her leg, the taillights glowing like cigarette ends as the chipmunk driving it shook one minuscule paw up at her.
Nick looked down at her, seeming to have positively enjoyed what he had watched. "Not a chance," she finished, "You're coming to my place."
As Judy opened the door to her apartment, she saw it as she imagined that Nick must. Her apartment was small even for a bunny, and for a fox it must have been positively cramped. The wallpaper was stained and peeling and the few pieces of furniture were all scratched and battered. The lone window looked out on the building across the small alley, filling the window frame with an unspectacular view of crumbling bricks stained with years of grime. The lone electric light, when she turned it on as they entered, filled the apartment with gloomy shadows under its feeble yellow light, revealing a room that could be considered a home only with a generous stretch of the imagination. She had no artwork on the walls or knick-knacks on the small desk that doubled as her table. There were only her battered books of law, the spines falling apart from how often she had read through them, and six letters from the family farm, written mostly in her mother's neat script but with crudely done post scripts by her younger siblings.
Nick's eyes looked around the apartment with what she imagined was a critical eye until he spotted something she hadn't even considered. To Judy, the rejection letter from the police academy pinned above her bed simply was, something that would always be there in much the same way that the sun rose every day. She hadn't even thought about the letter, let alone taking it down, and from the way that the fox was looking at it she knew it was too late.
"Ah," Nick said, as he effortlessly reached up to the low ceiling and pulled Judy's rejection letter free, "The last piece of the puzzle."
Judy jumped and snatched the letter away from him, but he had evidently already read it, because he shook his head in mock despair. "So you wanted to be a cop, is that it?"
She didn't respond, but he continued. "Only, whoopsy, the academy doesn't take bunnies, does it? So you settle for being a Prohi. And this little murder case is what, you proving yourself? You solve this, you get to be a cop?"
"So what if it is?" she asked heatedly, "There are innocent mammals dying because of these gangsters. Someone has to do something."
"And whoopsy number two, you think that'll mean anything. You really think anyone will care if you figure out who killed a hitmammal?"
Judy recalled Bogo's promise. "I know someone will."
Nick shook his head again. "You really are a dumb bunny, aren't you? Let's say you do the impossible and solve this without getting the both of us killed. You know where this ends? You get a nice attagirl, maybe a pat on the back from Bellwether herself, but there's always going to be something. There's always an excuse, Carrots. You keep jumping through hoops and they'll just keep raising them until you can't."
Judy raised an eyebrow. "Is that experience talking?"
She suddenly wondered what gave his words such a bitter tinge, but Nick just gave a snort and sat down on her bed. "You tell me," he said, "Are you really going to take me back to Podunk after a week, whether or not you solve this?"
"Of course I will," she said, stung by the implied accusation that she would go back on her word.
She folded up the letter carefully and put it in her purse as Nick stretched out on her bed. "Try to keep your expectations low," he said.
"I know I am," he added, and his expression was difficult to read.
She couldn't tell what was going on in his head, and his look was hard to bear, as though he was seeing through her. "That's a sad way of living," she said at last.
He grinned at that, his eyes sparkling with delight. "It's a realistic way of living," he said, "And the sooner you learn that, the sooner you can—"
She cut him off. "Be more like you?"
Nick either didn't catch or chose to ignore the emphasis she had put on the last word. "You could do far worse," he said, smiling, "After all..."
He pointed at her. "Dumb bunny."
He gestured back at himself. "Sly fox."
Judy folded her arms behind her back and strolled towards the bed, refusing to take the bait. He was just trying to get a rise out of her; she had buckled once, back at La Porte Verte, when he had called her a dumb bunny, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of reacting to it again. "And which one of us has a criminal record?" she asked sweetly.
Before Nick even had the chance to react, she had cuffed his arm to one of the posts of her bed's headboard. The mattress was lumpy and starting to pull apart, but the bed frame itself was solid metal and quite secure. Nick blinked, apparently surprised by the speed with which she had cuffed him as he looked down at the chain. "Really?" he asked, gesturing with his free paw to the shackle connecting him to the bed, "What am I supposed to do if I have to use the W.C.?"
"You're a sly fox, aren't you?" she asked, throwing his own words back at him, "Figure something out. Hold it 'til morning. Take the bed with you. Wet the bed, for all I care."
"There's something wrong with you, rabbit."
She ignored him as she grabbed her alarm clock from off her dresser and gathered up her spare set of sheets. Judy tried to make the patch of floor as far away from her bed—and consequently out of Nick's limited reach for as long as he was cuffed to it—as comfortable as she could. There wasn't much she could do, though, and she turned the lone light in her apartment off. "We'll start at six in the morning."
Judy could hear the fox shifting around on her bed. "My suit is going to get wrinkled," he complained.
She rolled her eyes. It really always was something with him. "Deal with it."
Judy had expected Nick to stay up and continue complaining, if only to prevent her from sleeping, but within a few minutes the sounds of his breathing gradually slowed. Perhaps it was because of his military service, but he had fallen asleep almost instantly, while she wasn't sure than even without him distracting her she'd be able to manage the same. A few more minutes passed, and the fox began making a peculiar noise that it took Judy a moment to place. Nick was snoring.
"Nick?" she whispered.
Nick gave no response, his gentle snoring continuing. Satisfied that he really was asleep, Judy crept to her bed, moving with agonizing slowness to avoid making noise. When at last she had reached her bed, she pulled a small box from underneath it and flipped the box open.
In the dim light coming through her apartment's lone window, the little snub-nosed revolver gleamed next to a small cardboard box of ammunition. When she had been on desk duty, there had been no reason to carry the gun, but now that she was in the field... Judy looked from the revolver to the fox sleeping on her bed. He had curled himself into a tight ball, his tail resting beneath his muzzle, which was slightly open. A single pearly fang glittered in the moonlight, but the fox appeared completely at peace, sleep having drained his features of their normally sly cast.
Judy closed the box and started to put it back under her bed before she hesitated. I'm not afraid of him, she thought, opening the box and removing the revolver, I'm just being prepared.
There was no telling what the morning would bring, after all, and she wouldn't let herself be caught off guard. If he had been telling the truth about the mob, she might need it. Judy took the gun and the box of ammunition and put them in her purse, satisfied by the way they fit neatly next to her badge and the rejection letter. With that accomplished, she tried to make herself comfortable with no greater success than she had the first time, tossing and turning on the hard wooden floor that was only slightly softened by the sheet. She fell into a fitful sleep, her dreams consumed by vague impressions of the Thief of the Night. She saw, over and over again, a shadowy figure emerging from the oblivious crowd, as they danced and drank and laughed, to murder Carajou, a figure with a smile like a drawer full of knives and eyes that burned a savage green.
By Judy's alarm clock, it was 4:37 in the morning when she awoke with a start to an unfamiliar sound. She was a light sleeper by bunny standards, where sleeping in the same room as dozens of other bunnies was the norm; she had in the past been woken up on several occasions by her next-door neighbors banging around their apartment, and at first she thought that they were disturbing her sleep yet again. The noise was a sort of crackling, like someone was wrinkling a massive piece of paper, and her apartment seemed to be uncomfortably warm even by the standards of August in the city. Before she could figure out what the noise was, the cause became apparent when the ceiling of her apartment collapsed in a spray of plaster dust and debris, the crackling became the raging of a fire as it sucked in air through her room's lone window, which had been left open a crack.
It seemed as though the air itself was on fire; the heat had gone beyond oppressive and each breath felt as though she were trying to inhale boiling water. The cheap floral wallpaper that covered the walls was starting to peel away, the glue catching fire and filling the apartment with smoke that burned at her eyes. When the ceiling had fallen, it had made her apartment nearly unrecognizable, the burned remnants of the apartment above hers filling the small space, and she looked for her bed, almost completely disoriented. Just barely audible above the crackling of the flames were low, whimpering cries of pain, and she spotted Nick.
The ceiling had brought with it a large support beam, which had landed on her bed and pinned the fox's left leg down. He was desperately trying to lift it off, but with his right paw cuffed to the bed's headboard he could only use a single arm and didn't have the strength to move the massive piece of burning wood. His eyes were bright with terror, and the sheets and mattress around him had caught fire in a few places that he was trying to avoid but could not. Unthinkingly, heedless of the smoldering debris that cut and burned her feet, Judy rushed to the bed, fumbling for the key to the cuffs in her skirt pocket as she did so.
Nick was flailing as he tried to avoid the flames, seemingly completely unaware of her presence, and she unlocked the cuff connecting the one around his wrist to the headboard even as the rapidly heating metal seared her fingers. When his arm was free, he pulled it towards the beam he was trapped under so quickly that he caught her across the face with his paw. Nick was so focused on trying to free himself that he didn't even seem to consider why he could suddenly use his arm; he just tried to lift the beam with all of his strength. It budged the merest fraction of an inch, and fell again. Judy jumped onto the bed, and called for his attention. "At the same time!" she said, getting her own fingers underneath the beam.
She pulled as hard as she could, to the point that something in her back felt like it was going to snap, but even the combined strength of a fox and a bunny wasn't enough for Nick to get his leg out. The fire had continued consuming her apartment, everything around them starting to burn as she looked down at the beam. Nick kept futilely trying to lift it, his lips pulled back from his teeth in an agonized grimace as he exerted his full strength, but there was simply no moving it. Wildly, Judy looked around her apartment as though a solution might present itself, and suddenly she had an idea. "I'll be right back!" she yelled, but Nick gave no indication that he had heard her, his attention entirely focused on trying to save himself.
Her apartment's closet didn't have a door; it was just a small alcove with a metal rod running across it just ever so slightly too high for her so that she had to stand on tip-toes or jump to put clothes away or take them out. She had asked the building superintendent to lower it right after she had moved in, and even more than a month later he still hadn't done anything. She brushed the thought aside as she ran to the closet, scrambling across the burning bits of wood and plaster that had covered her floor.
Her clothes and the hangers that they were on were all burning, but it wasn't her belongings that she cared about. She jumped and hit the closet rod as hard as she could, her fist going momentarily numb as the metal bar ripped its way free of the screws holding it to the walls of the closet. When she tried picking up the bar she almost immediately dropped it; the metal was far too hot to hold, and she fumbled for one of the blouses that had fallen to the floor and wrapped it around her paw. It was barely enough, and she could feel the heat burning at her palm as she carried the rod back to her bed, where Nick was still struggling to free himself, his movements increasingly frenetic.
Judy stood at the foot of the bed and forced one end of the rod underneath the beam. "Push!" she called, hoping that Nick would listen.
As he scrabbled at the beam again, she threw all of her weight at the other end of the rod, and the bed's frame screamed in protest as she used the foot of the bed as a fulcrum. The metal of the footboard started buckling even as the beam began to budge. Judy gritted her teeth. "Push!" she repeated, as she strained herself, pressing so hard that the muscles in her arms felt as though they were tearing. With a wordless cry of exertion, Nick pushed against the beam again, and their combined efforts raised it perhaps a half inch off his leg.
It was enough, though, and Judy nearly lost her balance as Nick pulled his leg free and let go of the beam. She staggered forward against the foot of the bed, and then looked over to Nick. He had shakily made his way to his feet, and she dropped the rod, her arms aching fiercely. Judy put her shoulder under his arm and led Nick to the window; the doorway to her apartment was blocked by burning rubble, and Judy was feeling increasingly light-headed, desperate for air. She strained at the window, but the heat must have warped it in its frame because the window wouldn't budge. Judy shrugged Nick off and then groped on the floor, trying to find something she could use even as she wished she hadn't dropped the rod. The apartment was almost completely filled with smoke, and it was all but impossible to see anything, but at last her fingers caught what she recognized by touch as the strap of her purse. She grabbed the purse and swung it as hard as she could at the window, and was rewarded when it instantly shattered, leaving a few shards of glass protruding around the edges. Judy swept the bottom of the frame with her purse to clear as many of the shards as she could, and then motioned for Nick to go through the window.
The fox needed no further urging and leaped through the opening, a piece of glass catching his suit, already covered with gashes and burns, and tearing it further. Once he was on the fire escape he reached back into the apartment and pulled her out. The choking black smoke streamed through the broken window after them and, unable to see anything, Judy slipped down the fire escape's ladder, catching herself with a jerk that felt as though her arms would be pulled from their sockets. Nick was a moment behind her; he didn't seem to be climbing down the ladder so much as he was falling at a controlled rate as he scrambled for the rusty rungs. Judy managed to hit the ground more or less gently, but Nick fell the last three feet, wobbling and catching the ladder too late. Judy grabbed at the fox and he leaned on her as they moved away from the building; the fox was incredibly heavy, and she could barely support his weight as they made their way to the building across the street. They both turned and watched Judy's apartment building burn.
Even the air of the city, smelling nearly as awful as it always did, seemed far sweeter than the air of the countryside ever had, and Judy breathed greedily for a few moments before turning her full attention back to her building. Someone must have used an alarm box to summon the fire department, because there was a fire engine already on the scene, its red bodywork gleaming in the flickering light of the fire. Even as some of the firefighters, solidly built horses to a mammal, jumped off the back as they buttoned up their heavy overcoats and grabbed their fire axes to enter the building, there was a flurry of activity as others connected the fire truck to the nearest hydrant. From across the street, Judy could hear them cursing as they wrestled with the balky hydrant before getting it connected, and then a great spray of water was directed at the flames licking their way out from the windows of the second story.
Some of the other residents of the building, who Judy recognized by sight though not by name, were watching the destruction of their homes with a stunned air from the street. There was an old goat that Judy recognized as living on the floor above her who had fallen to her knees, weeping as she clutched an old and yellowing framed photograph of a handsome young goat to her chest. There was the family of pigs who lived just down the hall from her, the normally energetic piglets tightly grasping each other and their father's leg in total silence, all of them black with soot. This is my fault, Judy thought in quiet horror as she watched the fire.
She had no doubt that the fire was the result of arson, and she was absolutely sure that the intended target had been Nick. She turned to look at the fox, who was still panting, trying to catch his breath as he leaned against the building behind them. "I didn't think that..." Judy started to talk to him but trailed off.
She had no idea how to end her sentence. Anything she said would be an excuse. She didn't think that Nick would be in any real danger? She should have known that the mob would consider him a loose end to tidy up. She didn't think that the mob would resort to such imprecise and dangerous methods? She had read dozens of reports detailing the casual and unfocused violence that gangsters used, everything from bombs that ended up catching innocent pedestrians in their blasts to shootings that were more dangerous to passersby than to their intended victims. She didn't think that they would have tried anything while a Prohibition Agent was with him? She had no reason to think that; she was a rookie who had made foolish mistake after foolish mistake.
"I didn't think," she said finally, and she could hardly bear to look him in the face.
There were tears running down her face that had nothing to do with smoke irritating her eyes. She had very nearly gotten Nick killed, to say nothing of her neighbors. Even if everyone had gotten out of the apartment building, she had left them homeless, and there was no telling what they had lost. Irreplaceable photographs, treasured family heirlooms, beloved toys—all of them gone, consumed by a fire that had been started because she had been too blinded by her own ambition to do things the right way. Judy wanted to become a police officer to make the world a better place and she felt sick to her stomach by what she had done. She hadn't made the world better for anyone; all she had managed to accomplish was to paint a target on a fox who, no matter his other faults or previous sins, had been honoring the agreement he had made with the government for protection from prosecution in exchange for information on Mr. Big.
"I'm sorry," she said, the words a choked sob, "It's my fault they went after you."
She wasn't sure how comprehensible she was, but she wouldn't have been able to stop even if she had wanted to; the words seemed to flow out of her mouth just as the tears continued to flow from her eyes. "I'll... I'll do what it takes to make you safe. To try to— To try to make this right. I'll get you on the first train back to Podunk. If you have to leave Podunk, I'll make sure it's someplace better. I promise," she said, forcing herself to look up into his face.
She swallowed hard. "I promise."
Judy expected Nick to come back with some biting retort to break her down further. She thought she would have deserved it, but he didn't say anything for a long moment. He didn't seem angry; he seemed tired, as though he could barely stand. The plaster dust had turned his red fur a dingy gray, making him look impossibly old. Nick sighed, and slid down the wall until he was crouching wearily, looking her straight in the eyes. They were only inches apart, and she could see that his eyes were bloodshot and puffy from the smoke, and he had a shallow cut clotted with soot under one ear. "You ought to buy yourself a ticket someplace far away," he said, his voice a harsh croak, "This? The fire, the beam, and—"
He broke into a coughing jag, tears cleaning streaks down his face as his body was wracked by the spasms, but he quickly got himself under control and kept talking, his voice marginally more normal than before, "...and all that jazz? This wasn't to kill me."
Judy's eyes widened, and Nick continued, his voice and expression uncharacteristically solemn, "This was to kill you."
Author's Notes:
Hey! That's the name of the story!
In all seriousness, though, this is an extremely important chapter in terms of the story that I'm trying to present, and not just because it has the title drop. I've been getting some great feedback on Judy's behavior leading up to this chapter (I especially want to thank Errinyes, MassGains, Jack_Kellar, DrummerMax64, and chaucer345 for their comments in this regard). I was somewhat circumspect in terms of how I responded to earlier comments because I knew this chapter was coming and I didn't want to spoil anything.
I fully intended for Judy's actions in regards to shanghaiing Nick to be questionable at best, and this chapter is when the consequences of her decision start to come out. Certainly, it's not the end of things either; saving someone's life after you endanger it in no way makes up what you owe them. It is a beginning, though, and I'll avoid any further commentary on that for now so that I don't give away any future plot developments. In the meantime, I always appreciate hearing what people think about my stories; I was trying to do a lot in this chapter and I really would like to know what you thought of it.
With that said, onward to my exhaustive (and hopefully not exhausting) author's notes on the historical context of this story!
The title of this chapter, "Why Can't You?" comes from a 1929 Al Jolson song. The lyrics are about trying, even when things seem impossible, and seemed appropriate to me for this chapter in particular and Judy's character in general.
Referring to something as a gas or a gasser was 1920s slang for something that was fun, so it's obviously being used sarcastically in this case.
The Barker car that the chipmunk drives is a pun on Baker, a company that really did make electric cars in the beginning of the 20th century. Electric cars may seem like a fairly recent invention, but electric cars date far longer back than the Tesla Model S or even GM's late-nineties half-hearted attempt with the EV-1 (incidentally, there's a great documentary about the EV-1 called Who Killed the Electric Car? that I recommend watching). In fact, the dominant position of piston-powered cars was not the case when cars were a relatively new invention. Early cars powered by internal combustion engines were unreliable, difficult to drive, expensive, and noisy. Electric cars, then as now, were far simpler and quieter, and the advantage of direct drives was even greater in the days before automatic transmissions or even synchronized manual transmissions. One of the major selling points for early electric cars was that they were advertised as being so simple that even a woman could operate them. Hooray, misogyny!
It was true, though, that early gas powered cars had to be manually cranked to start them, as referenced in chapter 6. Depending on the car that could take a significant amount of strength, involved getting down close to the ground, and ran the risk of breaking an arm if not done properly and the car backfired. Starting an electric car, in contrast, was as easy as pressing a button. However, even as internal combustion engines became far better, cheaper, and more reliable, there were no corresponding advances in battery or charging technology. The electric cars of the early 20th century used either lead-acid batteries (invented in 1881) or nickel-iron batteries (invented in 1901), since a key requirement for an electric car is for the batteries to be rechargeable. Neither one of these battery types is particularly energy dense; the lithium-ion batteries used in current electric cars weren't commercially available until 1991. Since gas was dirt cheap, electric cars continually lost market share until they eventually became curiosities, with brief surges of interest whenever a new rechargeable battery type (such as nickel-cadmium batteries in the 1960s) came out or an existing one became cheaper, when gas prices surged, and when environmental concerns over fossil fuels became more widespread.
I imagine, however, that in the world of Zootopia, electric cars would probably dominate the niche of small vehicles and wouldn't lose that position, since internal combustion engines don't scale down very well. A car sized for a mouse, a chipmunk, or a similar animal would be much easier to make as an electric car than as one powered by an engine and would also give a much smoother and quieter ride. I could easily see the Zootopia equivalent of Baker staying in business into the present day, either as an independent company or remaining as a marque under a larger brand after an acquisition. I think there would probably also be the land equivalent of ferries, where rodent-scale cars could drive into a much larger truck and transverse relatively long distances between parts of the city safe for them to drive in.
Handcuffs of the 1920s really don't look too much different from the image that probably springs to mind if you imagine handcuffs. Modern handcuffs do have better locking mechanisms and are made out of higher quality materials, but otherwise the basic design hasn't really changed in the US. In other countries, there's more widespread use of more modern designs, such as handcuffs with a rigid central connection rather than a chain; this design makes it easier to cuff someone who's struggling.
W.C. stands for Water Closet, which is what toilets were commonly called in the 1920s. Bathrooms of the 1920s tended to be rather different than they are now; the average person from the period would probably find it baffling if they learned that you had a toilet in your bathroom, since a bathroom in their mind would just have a bathtub (hence the name bathroom) and perhaps a sink. The W.C. would essentially be an indoor outhouse, if you'll pardon the contradiction in terms, with plumbing to flush waste rather than just a pit. W.C. has fallen out of use in American English, but one of the other slang terms for a toilet —a john —does date to the 1920s.
Judy's revolver is intended to be a Colt Detective Special, a gun chambered for .38 Special cartridges that was available in 1927. The Detective Special is a snub-nosed revolver that sacrifices accuracy for compactness; considering her size, she'd probably have difficulty with anything larger.
In chapter 1, I had made reference to police call boxes; similar boxes also existed for summoning the fire department. The fire truck in this chapter is based off of a 1925 Stutz fire truck, which was totally open to the elements. The Stutz Fire Engine Company went out of business in 1929, but in the 1920s they did have a fair share of the US market. Fire trucks, and fire hydrants, were fairly well established in 1927; fire hydrants had reached their more or less modern form in the late 19th century, and a hydrant in 1927 wouldn't look too different from a modern one. Fire trucks were the logical continuation of a series of developments in firefighting technology. Steam-powered pumps, which were so heavy that they needed to be pulled by horses, date to the 19th century, and while there were attempts at making fire engines that propelled themselves using the same source of steam power used for pumping water, by the early 20th century the advantages of internal combustion engines were apparent. The procedure used for fighting fires in the 1920s wasn't too dissimilar from modern firefighting, although the technology was obviously much cruder. As described, the fire truck would connect to a water source (typically a fire hydrant in the city, but it was also possible to run an intake hose to any sufficiently large source of water like a river or a bay), and then pump it to a nozzle that the firefighters could direct to extinguish the flames.
Considering the history of fire engines as having been pulled by horses, I figured that it would make sense that in the world of Zootopia that firefighters would pull double duty, hauling their equipment to the fire and then putting it out. Even once the technology reached the point where it was no longer necessary to pull the engine, I figure that tradition would be enough to keep firefighters as being mostly horses, at least in the 1920s. Presumably later on the advantages of a more varied force would be obvious enough to have more diversity, but in 1927 I could see them being pretty homogeneous still.
As always, thanks for reading!