Удалить из строки первое и последнее вхождение буквы

s = 'In the hole in the ground there lived a hobbit'
indexFirst = None
indexLast = None
#indexes = []
n = len(s)
for i in range(n):
    if s[i] == 'h' or s[i] == 'H':
        indexFirst = i
        break
for j in range(n-1, 0, -1):
    if s[j] == 'h' or s[j] == 'H':
        indexLast = j
        break
if indexFirst:
    s1 = s[:indexFirst] + s[indexLast+1:]
    print(s1)
else:
    print('Букв h или H нет')

In tobbit

str = "In the Hole in the ground tHere lived a hobbit"
print(str.replace(str[str.find("h"):str.rfind("h") + 1], ""))

>>> s="In tHe Hole in the ground tHere lived a hobbit"
>>> s[:s.lower().find('h')] + s[s.lower().rfind('h')+1:]
'In tobbit'
>>> s.replace(s[s.find("h"):s.rfind("h") + 1], "")
'In tHe Hole in tobbit'
>>>

print(str.replace(str[str.lower().find("h"):str.lower().rfind("h") + 1], ""))

s = 'In the hole in the ground there lived a hobbit'
b = list(s)[:2]
c = list(s)[-6:]
x = ''.join(b)
z = ''.join(c)
print(x,z)

s = 'In the hole in the ground there lived a hobbit'
b = list(s)[:2]
c = list(s)[-6:]
x = ''.join(b)
z = ''.join(c)
z = z[-1:]+z[1:]
print(x,z)